a central fact about early childhood
is that babies are born into the world
entirely at the mercy of others
they have no native strength
intelligence or utility
they cannot fight or complain walk away
or argue their case
their survival depends solely on their
capacity
to look up from their cots with vast
innocent beautiful eyes
and charm their parents into caring for
them it's their
power to attract love that ensures they
will be fed and clothed
protected and kept alive in exchange for
this nurture
young children readily offer their
parents or caregivers
unconditional admiration they naturally
adore
and are boundlessly impressed by those
who pick them up and bathe them
warm their milk and change their sheets
they are in awe at these giant people
who know how to turn on a washing
machine and kick a ball over a tree
there is at this stage no innate desire
whatever to question or doubt figures of
authority
given what is at stake it follows that
small children are instinctively
hugely sensitive to how well they are
doing at getting their admired
protectors on their side
if they feel they are loved they can
relax into themselves
and get on with the many other pressing
priorities of early childhood
working out how to eat solids figuring
out what a plug
socket is how a button functions
what words are and how soap bubbles form
but if love is in more restricted supply
the picture grows a whole lot more
complicated
there are childhoods in which for a
variety of reasons
parents fail to be charmed as they might
be they leave the baby to scream
they shout at one another there might be
violence and hysteria
lethargic despair and terror the young
child knows instinctively it is in grave
danger
if the situation is not somehow
corrected in extremis
it may be left on a hillside to die at
this point
our biology initiates a desperate yet
darkly logical process the young child
starts to try a lot harder
it redoubles its efforts to charm to be
good
to do what could be expected of it to
smile to ingratiate itself
it wonders what may be wrong with itself
to explain the parental disapproval and
harm
and doesn't feel any alternative but to
search in its own character and behavior
for answers
at the same time the child resists what
might from an adult perspective
seem like the obvious move to get
annoyed with and blame the adults in the
vicinity who are not looking after it as
they should
but such a bold thought does not belong
to the defenselessness of the early
years
we are in no position to mount a
challenge to our protectors
when we can hardly reach the door handle
let alone turn on a tap
we need to have our own front door key
and bank account
before cynicism is a realistic option it
is far more intuitive to wonder why we
are horrid
than to complain of being unfairly and
unkindly treated
small children therefore naturally turn
injury done to them into dislike of
themselves
they ask not so much why does my parent
fail to care for me
as how might i have failed this
admirable person
they hate themselves rather than doubt
those who should be protecting them
shame replaces anger it feels on balance
like the safer option a vicious spiral
of self-hatred then sets in
the unloved growing child wonders
constantly about their faults
their parent may be alcoholic
narcissistic
sadistic or depressed they may never
cook a proper meal
or shout intemperately from their
bedroom but none of that matters in the
slightest
the parent cannot be envisaged as
anything other than substantially
impressive
to explain the lack of love from the
paragons of parenthood
it must be that the child is an awful
person
they must be stupid and mean selfish and
slow
physically repulsive and irritating and
shallow
as childhood gets left behind much of
this dynamic is forgotten
the adolescent and young adult overlooks
exactly what went on
they cannot necessarily think clearly of
the early years
and parental figures may be keen that
they never do so
the former child can't tell anymore that
their feeling of shame
has specific origins it can feel like
something they might have been born with
a natural phenomenon like bad weather or
the flu
liberation awaits us when we dare to
take on board a highly implausible idea
that our self-hatred far from being
inevitable
is an internalization of early
deprivation
and that far from needing to revere and
admire those who denied us love
we are in a position to understand to
question to be annoyed
and to mourn what we did not receive we
are not so despicable after all
we've just till now lacked any better
ideas to explain why we didn't manage to
charm those
who should have loved us from the start
how to overcome your childhood is a book
that teaches us how character is
developed
the concept of emotional inheritance the
formation of our concepts of being good
or bad
and the impact of parental styles of
love on the way we choose adult partners