TRANSCRIPT
Some months ago, I had an incident on the streets of New York where I saw a mother physically attacking her child. She was attacking a little boy who looked to me to be about four years old. He had been playing a little too rough, according to her, with some of the stuff that she had, and she knocked something over. She yelled at him, and I saw this before I could say anything. Bomb! She hit him right in the side of the face, and her hand like went across his ear. His head swung around, he fell over, and then she continued to yell at him. He started to cry, and I went off on her. I told her to don’t do that. I said she was being physically abusive. She was traumatizing him. She yelled at me. She was with another woman. The other woman yelled at me and said, “Who are you to say this?” and they screamed at me, “Who are you to say this?” And I said, “I’m your conscience.” I was like, where did this come from out of me? I noticed I was very scared, and there were a lot of other people who saw this, and nobody said anything. Nobody intervened. That’s normal. Almost nobody ever does intervene in situations like this. But actually, I felt a lot of people weren’t on my side for intervening, for saying this. Even the little boy, he just watched all this happening. He knew I was defending him. And there were other kids too. This woman had other kids, or older kids, and I noticed quickly they all ran over to her like I was somehow doing something bad. I think, well, they’re little kids. They need to side with their mother. They need to believe their mother is good and right, even if a stranger, me in this case, is saying something that is emotionally correct.
Now, was it good that I intervened? Will it make these children’s lives better? Will this mother go home and punish them and hit them even more? Perhaps. I think one thing that could at least make me feel a little bit good is at least that little boy has an example somewhere in his mind and his psyche and his body of someone defending him. The other kids saw that too. Someone, some adult out there witnessed this and said, “That is wrong. That is not okay.” But did I really change stuff much for the good? I don’t believe so. At the very least, for me, at the very least, it’s just a little drop in the bucket in this crazy world.
But what I wanted to talk about, the thing that happened after, it’s really stayed with me. I was telling a friend of mine, a woman as it happens. I told her what happened, but I told her like this: I said, “You know, I was out on the street, and I saw an adult attack a child and hit this child in the side of the face and knock the child down.” In my face, she said, “Whoa, whoa! You saw this? Oh my god! Did you call the police?” And I said, “No, but I just told her don’t do that. That’s abuse.” And then the woman I told this to said, “Oh, was the child’s mother who did this?” And I said, “Yeah, it was the child’s mother.” She goes, “Oh, okay.” And then I thought, oh, okay, so if a stranger or a non-relative smacks a child in the face and hits a little four-year-old and knocks him down, that’s something we should call the police for. The person should be arrested. The person should go to jail. Yeah, I think I should call the police. But when it’s the parent, the child’s own mother who does this, it’s societally suddenly okay, even though the child did nothing. Maybe the child deserved to say, “Don’t do this.” Okay, now we need to calm down. But to physically attack the child, smack him in the side of the head and knock him down, it’s okay when a parent does this.
And I remember the conversation with this woman I was talking to just kind of ended. This friend of mine, that ended because she no longer was on my side. She was like, “Well, you know, to parent, what can you do? That’s life.” But I think it really highlights here in such a clear and extreme way that parents, according to the norms of our crazy society, parents own their children. They can do whatever they want to their children. Now, I know physical disciplining, physical abuse of children is illegal in some countries. I’ve heard it’s illegal in Sweden, but it’s not illegal in America. This woman was breaking no law. This was called disciplining. It’s not called child abuse. It’s not called a physical attack on a child. It’s called disciplining. It’s called corporal punishment. But it is an attack on a child.
And I actually wonder this. I’m not saying I’m right here, but I just wonder if this child had been attacked by a stranger. Let’s say just some random stranger had walked up and smacked the child on the side of the head. A horrible thing to happen. But would this actually even be worse than his own mother doing this? Maybe it’s actually worse than his mother, his primary role model in life, his primary love object in life, the person who is most entrusted to his welfare and his caring, the person who is teaching him primarily, teaching him how to relate to others, teaching him the definition of what love even is. When this person attacks him for doing something minimal, doing nothing wrong, even just playing like an excited four-year-old, when this person attacks him and smacks him and yells at him and knocks him down and leaves him with ringing in his ear and it leaves him in shock, maybe it’s actually even worse. Maybe it’s even more criminal when this person does it than versus a random stranger.
If a stranger attacks him, oh, he can learn, “Oh, strangers, they’re crazy. I don’t like them.” Huh, probably he’s learned that anyways in life. But when your own mother does it, when you learn that this is the definition of interaction with someone who loves me, what are his future relationships going to be like? What are his future love relationships going to be like? How is he, let’s say he’s heterosexual or later becomes heterosexual, and he has a wife or a girlfriend, what is he going to think about love between him and his girlfriend? Will he hit her? Will he expect her to hit him? Will he think that this is how you treat your children when you’re having a bad day? You hit them, you smack them. If his future partner has children with him and she smacks them, will he think this is right and okay and normal and healthy? And society, normal regular people in society, turn a blind eye, say nothing. No one said anything when this happened. I was the only one, and I felt they were looking at me with a look of death and hatred. And this has happened to me many, many times in my life. It’s actually a real disincentive for me to speak out when I see child abuse.
I remember one time on a subway. I don’t remember if I talked about this in a video, but I wrote it on the internet somewhere. I saw a woman violently shaking a little boy. I think he was about two years old, and I lost it. I said, “Don’t do that! You’re abusing that child!” And I remember she was embarrassed, but several other people on the subway became very aggressive with me. One guy even wanted to fight me. He was looking at me like he was gonna kill me for defending this baby, defending this toddler. And some women were yelling at me, “What do you know? Do you have kids?” And it’s like, I have kids? Suddenly, so if I have kids, then suddenly I’m supposed to empathize less with this child? And now I’m supposed to side even more with the parent? It’s like, it’s insanity. And it makes me wonder, how is our world supposed to grow and heal if people are allowed to attack their children and traumatize them? I mean, how does this little boy heal from this? How is he ever expected to heal from this? I was physically attacked as a child. I was hit by my dad once when I was little, and certainly I can… and once that he talked about later, and many times that I can remember as…
A teenager, but when I was little and attacked by a nanny of mine, I don’t know what she did to me. I’m presuming she physically tortured me. What else happened to me? How do I heal?
I mean, I’ve made a life of learning how to grieve my traumas, and it’s changed me profoundly for the better. But I feel incredibly lucky and privileged and fortunate that I could devote my life to this, and my passion allowed me to devote so much energy to this.
I think most people, especially when they’re more severely traumatized than I was, like this little boy, perhaps most people, it’s a tall order to do this healing. More important than ever, especially if this little boy is going to grow up and have children, because if he doesn’t heal, he’ll in some way or other pass it on to them.
But oh, to heal! To heal in this crazy world where people don’t even acknowledge what trauma is. This crazy world where so many therapists, most therapists, are insufficient. This crazy world where there’s, you know, so many people having no clue about self-healing and well, offering so few others support on the self-healing journey. It’s rough.
[Music]