Childhood Adversity Linked to Earlier Puberty, Premature Brain Development
pennmedicine.org
pennmedicine.org
It explained a lot about how I act today, and why I became very independent at an early age. I continue to struggle with feelings of emptiness, depersonalization, emotional numbness. It sucks to feel like you cannot escape your childhood even as a grown adult.
That's something I only vaguely became aware of in my 30's. I still have a hard time realizing that a roof and food is enough to raise robots but not a human being.
How are you coping with it now that you are aware of it ?
- after many failed attempts doing CBT and mindfulness based therapy, doing psychodynamic psychotherapy with a therapist who takes relationships and trauma seriously
- "Complex PTSD: From surviving to Thriving" (Pete Walker)
- "The Tao of Fully Feeling" (Pete Walker)
- "Treating Adult Survivors of Emotional Abuse and Neglect" (Hopper/Grossman/Spinazzola/Zucker)
- "Adult children of emotionally immature parents" (Gibson)
Haven't checked out some of these other titles (only know of pete walker, loving "From Surviving To Thriving"), thanks. Do you know about EMDR? Worth looking into, IMO.
But I can never bring myself to say "I am the victim of childhood trauma" when friends of mine were sexually abused by their fathers, or other friends were violently beaten by an uncle or a sibling. I didn't get the emotional support I felt I needed, but that is way different than being actively traumatized by a malicious adult.
>It sucks to feel like you cannot escape your childhood even as a grown adult.
It does, it really does. I used to deal with that a lot. This is a hugely unpopular opinion but I needed to hear it to move on and finally be whole: as long as you frame things the way it seems like you're framing them, namely: "it's my parents' fault that I'm unhappy as an adult," you'll never be able to 'escape' your childhood.
Trying to escape didn't work for me. The only thing that made me feel whole was acknowledging the past, accepting that my parents are humans trying their best, or suffering from huge amounts of stress, and it may have been tough for me at the time, and moving the hell on from it.
Said another way: there's no Karmatic Force that is going to reward me when I die because I silently suffered from emotional pain. So I might as well figure out how to put this behind me and live the best life I can, since God isn't going to give me a primo seat in heaven just cause mommy and daddy didn't love me enough down here in the pits.
I'm not trying to minimize what you're feeling or the pain this brings or how difficult it is to be whole after this. I've just found that perspective helped me tremendously in this situation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory
Ask families with relatives in lean world countries who visit those countries often and they will tell you that those kids mature far more quickly than the kids here. And they see it as a positive impact. And lament how children in America do not mature as quickly. Foreign kids who come here to study do better than the kids who are from here.
Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively. And further, faster brain development is portrayed negatively. Then early puberty is portrayed negatively. And it is all tied together with the statement that there is more depression, anxiety and psychosis.
Mind you but those traumatic experiences become so when you are taken from a world of high stress where everyone grows up like you do to a world more relaxed where people are different from you.
Think PTSD soldiers finding it difficult to live at home. But ok to live back in war country. Think martial arts training you to be defensive and then going back to a world with only peace.
It is not the high stress that causes the trauma but rather how different life becomes when you change gears back to peace.
I will always remember the quote from the Walking Dead. Until war is over, we are just walking dead.
Well, there is "adversity", and there is the sexual abuse and other trauma that the article is talking about.
It's literally the first line.
This may well not be true, though. Humans as a species mature much more slowly to adulthood than other similarly sized species, e.g. deer become full-blown adults and start reproducing inside of two years. One of the reasons we mature more slowly is it takes a lot of time to grow and train larger brains.
It's not clear to me that shortening this cycle and forcing maturation as quickly as possible is a good thing.
It looks positive from the perspective of a parent because he sees it as faster acquisition of skills he himself already possesses.
But it might be negative if because of that faster development kids will never have a chance of achieving some skills their parents don't even dream of possessing because their brains got pruned way too soon.
I'm sorry, this is just silly. Prior to the industrial revolution, low SES and high TES were normal; life was hardship and adversity. Think about that: humans have been around for about 200,000 years - that's a lot of generations of f'ed up kids. How did we ever survive?
> life was hardship and adversity
Not necessarily. Many argue that hunters and gatherers lived a much better life than during most of recorded history. There is plenty of evidence for this. It's entirely possible that a child would find itself in a small, well functioning group of people, without any major adversity during childhood.
Then why did we stop being hunter-gatherers?
In general, nothing says that better average quality of life necessarily makes you out-compete other populations.
Generally, more intensive civilizations outcompete less intensive ones, even though the average individual may be worse off in that society.
Sounds reasonable. In crowded waters fish start to mature at a much younger age.
Source: studied farming and a non trivial part of the curriculum was related to taking care of fishing and hunting resources.
Trying to remove childhood sources of traumatic stress is like trying to ensure your child reaches adulthood with all their teeth and no broken bones. It won't affect their survival but it will improve their life.
One could argue that adults from the third world are saner/happier than adults from the first world, despite poorer material conditions, because the struggle to obtain food, survive war and so on keeps them more more in contact with reality.
Does this mean we should deliberately starve western adults, or introduce artificial viruses and other stressors into their environment, in order to improve their mental well-being?
Of course not. The reality is that there are many urgent problems of survival for all humans, for example: supervolcanoes, ice ages, asteroid impacts, cancer, genetic meltdown, local supernovae, and an unlimited supply of others yet unknown. The physical universe is hostile to first worlders and third worlders alike, and to adults and children alike. The social and bureaucratic environment can be pretty bleak too!
Therefore we need the material and technological space we inhabit to allow us the best chance of solving these problems. We also need to find ways to make them seem less abtract and remote, so that we engage with them as if our lives and our sanity depended on it. Because they do.
We kinda barely did.
When all those humans that as children expeirienced "low SES and high TES" sat on then fruits of industrial revolution we got two world wars. Heck, we were close to nuclear holocaust thanks to f'ed up kids. Lower IQ makes you more susceptible to getting violent (childhoood lead exposure vs crime).
That Flynn effect? Could be just result of not messing up our kids so much anymore.
Life was certainly hard in ways that it is not now, but it was definitely hard in the precise ways that we evolved to cope with.
You had to worry a lot about obtaining food and shelter, and protecting yourself from predators and enemy tribes. You also had vast amounts of time for playing, contemplating, dancing, cooking, having sex, drinking some of the weird concoctions made by the local shaman that made you see things differently. All of this.
I am not sure I would be able to forego antibiotics, anesthesia and modern medicine in general, but for those not assuming this, I wonder how nice or lives of 24/7 stress and isolation would look like to our more primitive ancestors.
Our lives are potentially longer, but are they more worth living? I'm not pretending to have an answer, but I do think the question is valid.
I have repeatedly witnessed parents doing this, and their children inevitable became incapable entitled brats.
The goal of raising children is not having good children but having good adults.
It makes sense for difficult experience to mature the brain, that's how our neural networks strengthen. It makes sense to develop in response to adversity in order to overcome it again in the future. I would suspect the links to mental health conditions are due to another culturally constructed aspect of Western society. I.e. Mental unwellness is as much to do with how people respond to us as it is to do with any difference in brain function. The social world shapes our brain. If I withdraw from society for a while that may change some of my brain function but when I stop withdrawing and someone treats me a certain way that has another influence on my brain function. This latter influence may well be more influential that the effect of my original withdrawal. Therefore it's often difficult to firmly state that a difference in brain structure or function is due to X, when X is intrinsically related to Y, Z (and the whole alphabet).
We know that adversity is linked to mental health and therefore it must be related to brain changes. What we don't know is how exactly.if this is a beneficial evolutionary response - probably - that is almost inappropriate to a western society then it's not the evolutionary response that is problematic, it's the societal response to it.
We can be nearly certain that SES and TES are significantly heritable. Without accounting for that innate heritability, how can they say to what degree the outcomes are the result of circumstances/events?
https://www.med.upenn.edu/bbl/philadelphianeurodevelopmental...
I don’t see any mention of twins here or on JAMA, although I can’t access the full text currently.
Not really zero, because a confirmation of the common tribal knowledge have its value, but not much.
There are questions I'd like to ask and to know answers. For example, how the parenting style affects post-effects of adversities in a childhood. Is it possible to overcome negative impact with a parenting style? Maybe it is possible to get all the good effects (like faster development of a child) while avoiding bad ones?
Is there a link between parenting style and adversities? If it is a causal link than what direction it have? How the direction of a link affects development of a child?
Did adversities led child to feel himself not like his peers and if they did, what the impact it had? Maybe if we gather children with a similar issues and show them that they are not alone it would help? Or maybe it is better to keep child in a diverse environment? Does the answer depends on a kind of adversity?
These questions are the first that came to my mind. I could pose a few more if I thought a little longer. But the article doesn't try to answer these question, it just states the stupid correlation which anyone know without any article.
One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones.
Some of the traits above may be evolutionary adaption strategy. Growing in chronic stress environment requires different traits. The limbic system may have plan B when it's flooded with stress hormones constantly. Long term thinking and planning is less valuable when the life expectancy is low.
Another way is simply learning by example.
"Daddy said don't ever trust nobody, they always tryin' to get ya" (and maybe it's true in some communities) ... well it makes sense.
Or else "My father always said to just trust people, and they'll trust you back" - which also may be true for other communities.
The variables: physical/genetic, family experience, and community experience I think all add up.
I don't have the ref by I remember reading that poor kids who simply moved to a 'better neighbourhood' did a lot better in life, normalizing for everything else.
But in fact, both of these are wrong! Our ability to fully develop affective empathy, and thus to intuitively and effectively strive for win-win outcomes in the way that's constantly required of us by any modern society, is critically reliant on a basic foundation of intuitive trust; on the other hand, "just" trusting anyone with no fall-back of any sort simply invites abuse by unscrupulous or even actively malicious (i.e. socially predatory to the point of dysfunction, without even the most cursory interest in - or for that matter, the understanding of - the wellbeing of those they interact with!) actors, and might even leave us utterly unable to effectively counter such abuse even when we can acknowledge that trust has, in fact, failed. The one effective policy is "trust but verify", and with the right attitude it can work in a wide range of communities!
There are communities in which you should basically not trust anyone by default.
There are communities in which trust is generally a given.
(Obviously, both within reason)
There is also the possibility that people 'have it wrong' (i.e. cynical of a community that is trusting, and overly trusting in a bad neighbourhood)
My grandfather made windows as part of his business in the 1950's, most of his customers were farmers. He would trade his work often for livestock, say 'a pig' or '1/2 cow' or whatever - but he would get paid during slaughter season often many months away. There was no contract, just a handshake, and he never had to worry about the farmer taking the animal straight to the butcher. (This is before super common refrigeration, and everyone it town had a 'locker at the butcher's).
In some ways, there can be fairly deep trust, depending on the context.
I don't disagree with the other respondent's point about chemical changes either, but I suggest that a lot of our behaviour is simply learned.
Interesting. This sort of almost unnaturally-deep trust is actually very common to small, stable communities, with sky-high levels of social capital and a deep shared understanding of common obligations. It might be that having such stable communities around is an exceedingly-convenient catalyst to "jump-starting" broad-based social and economic development; a sort of "primitive accumulation" stage in the historically-materialistic sense where it's social capital that's being accumulated, not resources. Economic history would certainly seem to point in that direction. And it raises some uncomfortable questions about the future, since many people think of "late stage capitalism" and its social correlates as being highly corrosive of that trust-inducing social capital.
Which can be difficult as well, as there's all sorts of behavioural pressures that come from that.
I should add that some of this exists today. The local mechanic, if he knows you, will surely do a deal something like that. Also, there are favours for favours. For minor things he will definitely not charge. I don't think he's keeping track of favours, but certainly there is that.
As for the 'corrosive' aspects of social organization ... I think as we gain more wealth, we tend to be nicer and more trusting. I wouldn't say most of my modern, urban friends are distrustful for the most part.
You can see generally among the 'professional class' a fairly high degree of conscientiousness ... I'm hopeful we'll become more like that.
If poverty causes brain damage it's probably irreversible. If you don't transfer child fast enough then it won't do as good in the better environment as children that grew up in there.
I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. The first few years of school were a really jarring experience because the kids in my class were infantile and mentally under-developed compared to where I came from. This was also reflected in a huge gap in curriculum, we were covering skills that were taught 2-3 years earlier where I came from. Parents in western nations infantalise their children and prevent them from developing autonomy/responsibility for far too long. It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home.
A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.
W-what? I remember babysitting my 6 year old brother since the age of 8 while my parents were working.
That certainly sounds ridiculous, speaking as someone born and raised in a developed western nation.
Maximum penalty – 3 years imprisonment."
Legislation: Queensland Criminal Code Act 1899 (QLD) - Section 364A
Of course, the salient part is …unreasonable time without making reasonable provision… Is there precedent on what "unreasonable time" might constitute? In general, of course, it depends entirely on the child and their mental and emotional maturity.
(Obviously, you're still correct if we're talking about Queensland.)
(Before you say "but child services/adoption/foster care", read about how well kids are supervised there. Foster care is a LOT worse for kids than being ignored at home)
It sounds like you’re making a generalization with this point and not being specific to leaving kids home at 12 and thus being removed from the home.
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
Scientific research consistently finds that kids are consistently a lot worse of in foster care, and a LOT worse of in institutions compared to at home.
EVEN when those kids get abused at home the results of foster care and youth services are negative for the children involved.
This is the largest study on the subject by far. And the results are very clear, very thorough and damning for the idea of foster care. It just does not work.
And, frankly, if you look at "attachment theory", the very basis of behavioral theory for children, and then take into account that most kids get placed into foster care again and again (average 4.7 times in 6 years of foster care) you certainly understand why foster care is worse than ongoing trauma by biological parents.
The ongoing trauma by biological parents is a fixed, constant factor that the kids adapt to. Foster parents only last for a year at a time. Being in foster care means having serious doubts that you're still going to the same house tomorrow, the same school. It means being told that both your natural parents, an institution, and foster parents reject you as a person, and this happens when you're like 12-14 year old. It means knowing that you (or your foster parents for that matter) have zero control and re-placement. It's even realistic that they'll be collected by the police TONIGHT and have to sleep in a jail cell, if people they don't know make this decision.
Under this stress, and that's stress that you as a foster parent cannot take away and have zero control over the continued trauma (so any promises you make are VERY dangerous: if they get taken away (60-80% of those kids), you are actually making a VERY bad trauma worse). Under such stress normal development is not possible.
Attachment theory is the basis of behavioral theory and it says 2 factors are more important than any other in child development:
1) constancy: same environment, same people, SAME RULES tomorrow
2) ability to affect their environment: they must systematically get more control over their environment. What they DO must influence their life.
You will immediately realize that the whole POINT of foster care and child services is to take away BOTH of these. The problem is that these factors matter MORE than whether the child is abused. They matter MORE than whether violence (real or psychological) is used against the child.
The goal is reunification until there can be no reunification. Everyone involved in the case is on board with that. We foster to bring families back together. And we've been successful at that.
> The ongoing trauma by biological parents is a fixed, constant factor that the kids adapt to.
No, it's not. It can and does escalate. A family's financial situation can get worse and thus more neglect. An abuser gets away with it long enough, they'll abuse more and worse.
> Foster parents only last for a year at a time. Being in foster care means having serious doubts that you're still going to the same house tomorrow, the same school.
A placement will not be disrupted unless there is an absolutely good reason (ie: the child needs a therapeutic foster placement.)
> It means being told that both your natural parents, an institution, and foster parents reject you as a person, and this happens when you're like 12-14 year old.
Foster parents are loving people who are willing to take in children, love them as their own and return them to family when it's safe. They work with the bio parents as much as they can. There are phone calls, visits, etc. The children and their needs are placed first and they're treated with dignity and respect. Look into "normalcy" laws that were passed; they promote treating children normally, not like they're different because they're in the system.
> It means knowing that you (or your foster parents for that matter) have zero control and re-placement. It's even realistic that they'll be collected by the police TONIGHT and have to sleep in a jail cell, if people they don't know make this decision.
This is categorically false. Nobody is coming into my home to take these children without a dang good reason. A reason I would know about and have a say in prior. Period. That just doesn't happen.
> Under this stress, and that's stress that you as a foster parent cannot take away and have zero control over the continued trauma (so any promises you make are VERY dangerous: if they get taken away (60-80% of those kids), you are actually making a VERY bad trauma worse). Under such stress normal development is not possible.
We make sure children get therapy to help cope. We take continuing education classes to help US learn to help the children cope. We work with the therapists and often the parents to try and get the children to bond to us. Bonding is healing.
> 1) constancy: same environment, same people, SAME RULES tomorrow
Always. Children thrive on consistency. They need to have some control in their lives and that is provided by the foster parents. They have come out of a situation where they have no control and it is not consistent from day to day.
> 2) ability to affect their environment: they must systematically get more control over their environment. What they DO must influence their life.
See my reply to point 1.
> You will immediately realize that the whole POINT of foster care and child services is to take away BOTH of these.
Again, categorically false.
Until the day when we can provide services to all families in need before it becomes too unsafe for the children to live there, foster parents are a necessity. A lot is different now. Foster parents are required to take ongoing training to learn how to help children work through the trauma they've experienced. Foster parents are strongly encouraged to work with the bios both during the case and to be part of their support system AFTER the case. Laws have been passed to make sure children in care are allowed to be like normal children. You don't have to get your neighbor a background screen just to let your foster child have a sleepover with their children. Cases are not supposed to drag out. Most cases are supposed to end in permanency w/in a year. There are certain cases where it is mandatory that this happens.
Foster parents, case management, the judges, etc, all want to see children go home. Sometimes that isn't possible and it breaks everybody's heart. But the system you're describing doesn't exist. Not today.
Then where is the new study ? Fact of the matter is that foster care was horrible 170 years ago when it started, was terrifyingly bad between the 2 WW (should I link to pictures of kids getting locked in steel cages in foster care homes (even outside) or should we skip that part ? Many just died), it was bad after WW2, and it was very bad 10 years ago. And in the US it wasn't even the worst it could be. Google "aktion T4" and prepare to be horrified by the child services system. While the US was certainly better, it wasn't by much.
If you want to claim things have radically turned around you have a high mountain to climb. What has been changed in the system in the last 10 years that was not done for close to two centuries ? Because you're just making a claim of radically different results with zero data on what has changed, why it would matter, never mind an actual study on if it has actually changed.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that foster parents of the last 10 years ... are pretty much the same as foster parents of 20 years ago, so of course the study is valid.
> > Under this stress, and that's stress that you as a foster parent cannot take away and have zero control over the continued trauma (so any promises you make are VERY dangerous: if they get taken away (60-80% of those kids), you are actually making a VERY bad trauma worse). Under such stress normal development is not possible.
> We make sure children get therapy to help cope. We take continuing education classes to help US learn to help the children cope. We work with the therapists and often the parents to try and get the children to bond to us. Bonding is healing.
That was equally true 10 years ago. Didn't help back then, why would it help now ? Bonding is only healing if the bond doesn't get broken again, and even that's disregarding quite a large body of research claiming a "critical period" exists, which goes quite a bit further and states that children only really bond to parents the way most animals do. They claim a parental bond can only form in the first 6 weeks of life. After that, it just cannot happen because the hormones that make it happen just won't be there.
Also I have no trouble finding research that therapy is equally likely to make issues worse as it is to make it better (in fact this is why psychotherapy, ie. long talks with a psychiatrist under certain conditions, has pretty much been eliminated from psychological practice). Quite a few studies say entering kids in a sports program has better effects than therapy.
And lastly psychological safety research says that often safety cannot be restored once it's really broken. As in cannot ever be restored, not even in 30 years (e.g. placed children who have to stay in institutions, or women who get raped often still complain of "angst" disorders 20-30 years later). Being taken away and forced to live somewhere else breaks safety. There is no therapy that fixes it. There is nothing that fixes it.
And this makes sense doesn't it ? When push comes to shove we as individuals aren't safe in society. There is a lot of actors, from criminals to accidents to government employees/..., that could hurt any one of us quite a bit with zero recourse. Just watch the news. That is fine, because we don't believe that to be the case. But children who get placed, or victims of crime, well, they've been demonstrated that they aren't safe. No amount of therapy is going to fix that because their assessment of the situation is entirely accurate: they aren't safe. Victims of crime do not magically receive safety from further crimes, no matter how serious those previous crimes were. It's almost ridiculous to state it, but of course no amount of rapes protects a victim from getting raped again. Children who get placed get placed on average 4.7 times in 6 years. If they think they're unsafe from getting "placed" (ripped from their environment, suddenly and violently), that is entirely correct reasoning. They aren't safe. Fixing it with therapy is not possible because it's the ones who believe they're safe who are wrong.
You can see things happen, but you can't "unsee" them.
> > 1) constancy: same environment, same people, SAME RULES tomorrow
> Always. Children thrive on consistency. They need to have some control in their lives and that is provided by the foster parents. They have come out of a situation where they have no control and it is not consistent from day to day.
Most parents of placed children have never abused their children. I find it hard to believe you don't know this, but okay. The biggest reasons for placement are divorce, "autism" (meaning difficult children), and poverty (often combined with drug problems or criminal histories/records). Those together account for >90% of placements, and none involve abuse of the children on the part of the parents, none involve "no control". If you say that these aren't good situations, I'll agree with you, but it doesn't justify doing a placement. In fact the biggest constant factor in these situations is the parents, THAT is the main thing limiting damage, which foster care then takes away.
> > 2) ability to affect their environment: they must systematically get more control over their environment. What they DO must influence their life.
> See my reply to point 1.
Actually in the case of divorce children not only have the ability to help, they often succeed (again, I can link studies if you want) in keeping the parents sometimes together, mostly on speaking terms until they move out. If that's not control of the situation, I wonder what exactly you would call control of the situation. And frankly, if you think about it from an evolutionary psychology standpoint, you could make a very good case that this is in fact the normal situation, the very reason couples exist (meaning men and women form bonds in order to have children, if not on an individual purposeful level, then certainly as a species, so even in very good marital relationships the kids are a big stabilizing factor).
Same with autism and poverty. In both cases there are very obvious actions the children can take that will increase their control (with autism: mask the symptoms, with poverty, well we've all had a coffee in the Bronx, no ?). Are either of those coping strategies ideal situations for children ? Of course not. Both, however, are better than foster care ("your parents don't care anymore" or "your parents are not allowed to care anymore by the state")
> You will immediately realize that the whole POINT of foster care and child services is to take away BOTH of these.
(meaning consistency in not having their environment and parents changed, and taking away control because other people decide everything for them, mostly out of necessity because of the frequent environment changes)
I stand by this point.
> Foster parents, case management, the judges, etc, all want to see children go home. Sometimes that isn't possible and it breaks everybody's heart. But the system you're describing doesn't exist. Not today.
A lot of studies (that, granted, come from many different international settings, but also from the US) claim that this is not true. The biggest factor that keeps coming up is that all those people want maximal physical "safety", absolutely minimizing risk, for the children (but really for themselves), ignoring the psychological damage done to them. The purpose, first and foremost is to avoid mistakes where children for example get sexually exploited or die as an eventual result of a decision not to place them, and the police catches the perpetrators and it gets smeared out in the press. One number I've found, which clearly shows the problem, is that ~400 children get placed to avoid the situation that 1 might get beaten (not killed, beaten, potentially just once). So for instance, children will get placed if there is a sole mother that has to leave young kids alone to have job. The eldest kid will do that and take care of it, and do it well. I'm not 30 years old and I know I've had to do this for my parents 20 years ago when it wasn't a problem. Now if you get caught repeatedly it may result in placement.
Furthermore despite these "safety" decisions the amount of children found abused by the police keeps going up. So if the purpose of child placement is to make those go down, they're placing the wrong children and generally not making good decisions.
Plus this paper by itself makes the point that this claim of yours is false. Read the paper, for one thing, it matters a LOT which case manager decides on the child. This has nothing to do with the child, with the situation the child is in, whether the child gets abused, ... And clearly, what happens in practice is not in the interest of the vast majority of the children getting placed, so that's not it either (unless you want to claim they just don't know that, and they're placing kids not knowing what they're doing)
You.. you realize you're still conversing with an actual foster parent, right? Foster kids don't get locked in cages. We have people in our homes checking on the kids at least once per week. They get seen outside of our home without us around several more times per week. These kids are in constant contact with people in the system, therapists, their bios, etc. If we were harming them, people would know.
> If you want to claim things have radically turned around you have a high mountain to climb. What has been changed in the system in the last 10 years that was not done for close to two centuries ? Because you're just making a claim of radically different results with zero data on what has changed, why it would matter, never mind an actual study on if it has actually changed.
>I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that foster parents of the last 10 years ... are pretty much the same as foster parents of 20 years ago, so of course the study is valid.
At the VERY least you need to look into the "normalcy" laws. After that, go ahead and look into the changes in training necessary to become a foster parent.
> Bonding is only healing if the bond doesn't get broken again,...
We form and break bonds as humans, ALL THE TIME. Being able to form and break bonds is a necessary and healthy part of life. If a child can't form a bond they will have more issues develop as they mature.
> Most parents of placed children have never abused their children. I find it hard to believe you don't know this, but okay.
The Number One Reason is Neglect. The top five reasons in no order are abuse, neglect, parental drug use, parental incarceration, loss of parents. And they're only placed in foster care if a family or non family care giver cannot be found first.
> The biggest reasons for placement are divorce, "autism" (meaning difficult children), and poverty (often combined with drug problems or criminal histories/records). Those together account for >90% of placements, and none involve abuse of the children on the part of the parents, none involve "no control". If you say that these aren't good situations, I'll agree with you, but it doesn't justify doing a placement. In fact the biggest constant factor in these situations is the parents, THAT is the main thing limiting damage, which foster care then takes away.
Where are you getting this?
> Furthermore despite these "safety" decisions the amount of children found abused by the police keeps going up. So if the purpose of child placement is to make those go down, they're placing the wrong children and generally not making good decisions.
How is child placement supposed to make child abuse go down? Child placement exists because there are parents who are not currently able to make safe choices for their children. Child placement is not meant as some deterrent. The legal system is supposed to be the deterrent in this situation.
> One number I've found, which clearly shows the problem, is that ~400 children get placed to avoid the situation that 1 might get beaten (not killed, beaten, potentially just once).
Children shouldn't get beaten. Ever.
> So for instance, children will get placed if there is a sole mother that has to leave young kids alone to have job. The eldest kid will do that and take care of it, and do it well. I'm not 30 years old and I know I've had to do this for my parents 20 years ago when it wasn't a problem. Now if you get caught repeatedly it may result in placement.
Depends on the age of the child(ren). This is where a support network would come in to play. Before the children are removed, the investigators will do their best to help the parent find and build a support network so that the child(ren) can have a safe place to stay while the parent works.
Not locked in cages ? What do you suppose happens to these kids if they were to, say, go back to their biological parents. Just walk out. And before you say "no bars, no locks", it is actually the case that large pieces of the justice system has no bars either.
Something is a cage if you can't leave. If violence will be used to return you to that place, that takes the place of locks. Those kids are very much locked up.
> We have people in our homes checking on the kids at least once per week. They get seen outside of our home without us around several more times per week. These kids are in constant contact with people in the system, therapists, their bios, etc. If we were harming them, people would know.
If you were PHYSICALLY harming them, yes. Psychologically you must realize that those people, for those kids, are a threat. Each of those individuals is a risk for them to get placed away from you, again. If they see something (even misinterpret something, totally out of context), they will get ripped out again. My point is this is the exact opposite of safety, this is far worse than daily beatings. In other words, those people are there to protect family judges and child care investigators from getting accused of causing abuse, they aren't there for the safety of the child at all.
Reminds me of the scene in "instant family" in the hospital where the child sees the foster parents trying to tell the truth about the nail accident. IMMEDIATELY the child panics, tears in her eyes, and refuses, with an initial angry fit and shouting to her foster parents (whom she really does not want to lose) to let the child care worker talk to anyone but her. Why do you suppose she has this reaction ? Do you not see the treat ? Do you think it would have been the first time that sudden re-placement for a dumb reason without asking her happened to her ?
Here it is: https://youtu.be/GcrDSzfaydo?t=220
And let me assure you, compared to what you sometimes read in child protection papers, this was a very mild reaction by that child. Very often a child will respond to such an event by running away. I hope you can understand where such a reaction comes from.
And let me ask you. If you had zero control over your own life, but had 10 people regularly have a conference and if at that conference decisions are made, they are implemented with brutal violence on you. Would you consider this a way to avoid harm to you ?
No. You wouldn't. Such a situation would inflict harm. You would never feel safe. You would never feel in control. Which is of course exactly my point.
Which is why you are harming those kids. And I get it, you can't fix it. You can't stop it. That unfortunately doesn't change the fact that you are harming them. But as I'm sure you've heard often in foster care: the world just isn't fair.
> We form and break bonds as humans, ALL THE TIME. Being able to form and break bonds is a necessary and healthy part of life. If a child can't form a bond they will have more issues develop as they mature.
First, we're talking about parental bonds. Those are definitely not formed all the time, outside of birth. Do you form bonds on which you will be totally reliant for 20 years "all the time" ? I sure as hell don't. Nobody does, not even kids.
> How is child placement supposed to make child abuse go down? Child placement exists because there are parents who are not currently able to make safe choices for their children. Child placement is not meant as some deterrent. The legal system is supposed to be the deterrent in this situation.
The idea is that children who are abused get placed, stopping the abuse. This is not happening, which brings the whole point of placement in question.
> Children shouldn't get beaten. Ever.
No, you should NOT HARM CHILDREN. And when you don't have a choice, you should pick the one with MINIMAL harm for the children. This does NOT mean you should protect children from everything, that itself is child abuse.
Aside from the fact that the vast majority of cases there was no beating of the children by the parents, so this just doesn't apply. Does it apply to your foster kids ? But even where it does: the damage done by placement is far greater than the damage a parent does by beating child. That's the point I'm making here.
Furthermore, children will explore boundaries. That means they will push you until you react with violence (e.g. ideally a slap). If you let them push and push and push, you and the child will lose control and it will lead to disaster, because their behavior will intensify and intensify without bound. So I do hope you make this very important exception to the simplistic "no beating children, ever" statement.
Simplistic catch-all answers just lead to disaster in kids, just like everywhere else.
> ... the investigators will do their best to help the parent find and build a support network so that the child(ren) can have a safe place to stay while the parent works.
I have calculated how much time an investigator can spend on a child before a decision to placement is made by taking their working hours (optimistically, without lunch or bathroom breaks), divided by caseload. I came to 23 minutes per month. That includes the court case (there is no investigator in the actual court case by the way, just a short report by the investigator is read). Explain to me how these people do what you say they're doing ? How do they even drive to the house of these children (of course, plenty of stories online with claims investigators never saw the child before placement, and nobody in court, save the parents, saw the children before the case, so there's that). Can you explain how they even check anything in those 23 minutes ? Because what you're saying sounds very, very hard to believe.
So allow me to say: no, they don't. Investigators just don't do this. They may send childcare workers that do this (and as said, judging by stories online, they often don't), but they are most certainly not doing this themselves.
>Something is a cage if you can't leave. If violence will be used to return you to that place, that takes the place of locks. Those kids are very much locked up.
They would be returned to their legal guardian, foster parent or otherwise. How does this not apply to any child?
> If you were PHYSICALLY harming them, yes. Psychologically you must realize that those people, for those kids, are a threat. Each of those individuals is a risk for them to get placed away from you, again. If they see something (even misinterpret something, totally out of context), they will get ripped out again. My point is this is the exact opposite of safety, this is far worse than daily beatings. In other words, those people are there to protect family judges and child care investigators from getting accused of causing abuse, they aren't there for the safety of the child at all.
Again, you're talking to an actual foster parent. Our children have a healthy relationship with their case managers, GALs, therapists, teachers, etc. We, the foster parents, work with all of them to make sure this is so, but honestly it happens organically. Our current children absolutely love their case manager. They enjoy the time they spend with him.
> Reminds me of the scene in "instant family" in the hospital where the child sees the foster parents trying to tell the truth about the nail accident. IMMEDIATELY the child panics, tears in her eyes, and refuses, with an initial angry fit and shouting to her foster parents (whom she really does not want to lose) to let the child care worker talk to anyone but her. Why do you suppose she has this reaction ? Do you not see the treat ? Do you think it would have been the first time that sudden re-placement for a dumb reason without asking her happened to her ?
> Here it is: https://youtu.be/GcrDSzfaydo?t=220
This is a movie. It is "based on" a real story, but look up what "based on" really means. Not much.
However, first, I've not said placements do not disrupt. They do. It is strongly discouraged. Obviously, this child would rather stay with her new foster parents than her last. You can clearly see she's forming a healthy bond with the new foster parents and is willing to "protect" them in order to stay. This isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. In fact, this is good that she's formed a bond with her foster parents. In fact, it is good that she trusts the case worker enough to go and talk to her about this incident.
>And let me assure you, compared to what you sometimes read in child protection papers, this was a very mild reaction by that child. Very often a child will respond to such an event by running away. I hope you can understand where such a reaction comes from.
Children in care have been traumatized most of not all their lives. They have over developed amygdala. They are in constant fight, flight or flee anyway, so I have no doubt that a few would run away.
>And let me ask you. If you had zero control over your own life...
Let me ask you. What child has complete control over their life?
>.., but had 10 people regularly have a conference and if at that conference decisions are made, they are implemented with brutal violence on you. Would you consider this a way to avoid harm to you ?
Nobody brutally harms foster children. This is patently false.
>Which is why you are harming those kids. And I get it, you can't fix it. You can't stop it. That unfortunately doesn't change the fact that you are harming them. But as I'm sure you've heard often in foster care: the world just isn't fair.
I am not harming them. It is traumatic to be removed from family. On that we can agree. However, children can and do form healthy loving bonds with their foster parents. It is absolutely possible for kids to love bio parents and foster parents simultaneously. That loving bond helps to heal them and the thrive and flourish while in care.
The point is who they get returned to, of course, and how they see those people. Children outside of foster care get returned to the situation they know. Inside youth services or foster care, not so much.
Also you and I both know that if they run away re-placement into an institution will not be far behind. So even though you say it's the same, it's not. It's just not. And yeah I get that part of the reason is that a child that runs away from their biological parents simply doesn't realize institutions exist. They actually believe the lies, that the police will fix things.
> Again, you're talking to an actual foster parent. Our children have a healthy relationship with their case managers, GALs, therapists, teachers, etc.
Yes, and if you were ever a foster kid you would know that you have to make DAMN sure they believe so. And that it's never actually the case.
As a kid in youth services you have 2 choices, you will eventually realize. All these people MUST think you're just about fine (but that they're still able to "help"), or they must be scared of you. Anything else leads to "help", which is a disaster, or to "treatment", catastrophe. Yes this sentence contains a hint as to why I might have negative feelings about these people.
Sorry to pop your bubble, but these kids are lying, scheming, faking and cheating you. And neither you or I will blame them for that (you are going to get mad when you realize though. It'll pass, but the damage will be done). Though kids in youth services in my experience have a bit of a "brutal honesty habit", so maybe you should ask. But be careful: like safety can't be restored, you also cannot "unhear" the sentence "I'm doing this to prevent worse", and you may realize that the clock is ticking, that they have taught themselves not to care about you and lie about it, that they have gotten plenty of practice at this and are far better at it than you are at identifying it and that thought, too, cannot be "unthought of".
Do you realize the violence your will kids face if you or their therapist or their teacher were to even just doubt that they're fine ? Do you think someone can develop normally knowing this ? Don't you think that, perhaps, there's something you're missing ? That this absurd situation you think you see in your kids is perhaps simply not real ?
They are faking it and in reality their "safe" environment is causing extreme stress because they cannot ever let their guard down. The only minimal remainder of control they have is utterly and critically dependent on everyone believing everything is fine. They cannot ever be honest to almost anyone. I mean I hope it's not like this in your case of course, but ...
> This is a movie. It is "based on" a real story, but look up what "based on" really means. Not much.
Yes, the psychological reactions of these kids have been pared down to a completely unrealistically peaceful level. Nobody in such a situation reacts as controlled as the kids in this movie do. Also they have systematically avoided showing the even worse sides of youth services, such as the initial taking away of the kids, the institutions, the complete and total idiots that are the employees, supervisors and therapists, the ruins with barbed wire they house the kids in, the fact that your "hyperkinetism" treatment is never going to fix your teacher (meaning the problem youth care solves is NEVER the kid, but ALWAYS the kid is the one punished/treated/locked up/... It never works because you cannot fix a leaky car tire no matter what you do with the bike in the trunk), the constant replacement/changes (you NEVER have the same consultant twice. Just doesn't happen. They quit before they'd see you twice), the "time out" prisons, they show the many court cases only by showing a bag of bears instead of the constant crying and the beatings and fights by the police officers in the waiting rooms, the group of terrified children collapsing quietly in their chairs or looking for a fight, the moment a child realizes that the therapists outright only care about you while they're being paid for it, or the ones where it's not even for their pay but who do it to psychologically insulate themselves ... Reality is far worse on all fronts.
Have you ever seen a 5 year old in an institution in this situation: it's one of their first days, they've just calmed down a bit. They actually connect to one of those group supervisors. And they do what kids do, in such a difficult situation: they start following them around. The kid thinks this supervisor cares. Now you're about to say: she does. SHE probably thinks she does (like you do). But she doesn't: that's not allowed. So at 6pm, at the door to the group, this 5 year old learns: the supervisor doesn't care. She (it's usually a she) is not allowed to care. The kid is violently torn away from this supervisor it was trying to attach itself to, and the child realizes how it's going to be from now on: EVERYBODY rejects you. Whether they want to or not. It's just a matter of time. The realization dawns. It becomes very suddenly very clear why every kid is just lying around in the sofa, avoiding every contact they can avoid, avoiding to be confronted AGAIN with the forced or real rejections.
Then they're in their room for days, crying. They stop eating for a day or two. They realize what a horrific mistake they've made by not preventing themselves from ending up here, that it's never going end, ever. That the other kids were telling the truth and not at all trying to be mean.
None of the adults understand. Well that's not true, they do. But their job depends on them not understanding: either they refuse to understand that this is what happens to all the kids, or they're not there anymore tomorrow (it's sometimes about the money if they're freelancers, but more often it's just a filter).
You don't realize that for your kids you're like this supervisor, at 16h, before they go home at 18h. You are going to reject your kids. That's a certainty. The kids realize this, but know that pointing this out to you will lead to disaster, a further bout of sudden violence against them, completely uncertainty about what comes next. What's next in that case could literally be a jail cell.
And to youth services you're nothing but a bed: one more kid they can "save". Disgusting assholes.
European countries are 'Western nations'.
It'd still be another single data point though.
Edit: just another variation of "children these days" and "when I was young we used to go to school on foot and swim through the river"
My down-voters are utterly wrong.
'The Western World' is a term derived from antiquity, in which 'the middle east' is at the centre, East would be China etc.
In modern terms, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand would be considered Wester nations.
If you say "Developed Western Nation" in this context, for example, in the press, or even on the BBC it means the 'classical west', not 'E/W Europe'.
Australia is located in Asia Pacific, and the US is in North America but they are 'Western Nations' by virtue of their cultural history.
Just google the term 'Western Nation'.
vhttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/The_West...
So, growing up in Europe could mean that you grew up in the Balkan countries during one of the wars in the 90's. Also, even if you think that map is wrong, countries in the Balkans are certainly not a part of "developed western nation".
'The West' is referenced from basically central Asia, a term devised before the 'discovery' of the New World. The term generally includes 'new world' countries that are founded by 'old world' Western countries.
This is an old term, but it's used ubiquitously today, this is not a contentious subject.
Because in most species, reproducing takes a lot of effort so organisms don't get ready to reproduce until the last possible moment. E.g. fungi don't produce mushrooms the first couple years they're in a new pile of woodchips even though there is more than enough mycelium already, it's not until there are only a couple more years of woodchips left that they will produce mushrooms.
Parents who treat their children as if they are fragile (for example, by keeping them away from dirt and potential allergens, such as peanuts) are depriving their children’s immature immune systems of the learning experiences those systems need to develop their maximum protective capacity.
Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/by-mol...
Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems
to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results.
The researchers found specific associations of SES and
TSE with psychiatric symptoms, cognitive performance,
and several brain structure abnormalities.
That or the brain formed too many connections too rapidly before the pruning stage.
Either way, the very structure of the brain is borked.
Not a neuroscientist though so take my input with a grain of salt.
Or real "there isn't enough food today" style poverty
We already know that the races differ in speed of maturation and various measures of adversity. Was race controlled for? (Paper is paywalled for me.)
I don't think Western society is ready to bring up children without some kind of major problem for decades still. School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change.
Can you tell if you can drive a car when you've never tried? Maybe you will sit into the car and it will just click. Maybe not - that's why you don't just go but first go to a driver school to learn. And even the notion that driving is more complex than parenting seems absurd, so going to a parenting school should absolutely be required.
A couple classes don't say much. Talking with a psychologist for an extended period might work, but that's quite a leap to expect; currently an analysis like that is relevant to almost nobody.
> Can you tell if you can drive a car when you've never tried? Maybe you will sit into the car and it will just click. Maybe not - that's why you don't just go but first go to a driver school to learn.
Learning a straightforward skill is not at all like testing if you're fit to handle an extremely difficult long-term stressful trial.
The equivalent is more like saying "I could learn to drive a car within five years." Which, you'll notice, is not even a challenge for 99% of people. The general population does not need to preemptively check if they're fit to be a car driver, the answer is just 'yes'.
You can take classes on how to raise a child before/after they're born. That's the easy part! It doesn't tell you if you're "fit" or not.
Then we should find out if it is worth it and if so, start doing it ASAP. Children are not something new parents should be experimenting on. Early child development is so important and yet is treated as if it was nothing, we still don't even have a school class focusing on parenting.
Wait, what? You can’t just drop that one in there at the end without some follow up! I know Climate Change is the current boogeyman that’s causing all sorts of bad things, but now it’s causing mental health problems? Is there anything Climate Change can’t do?
Our species has the privelige of harnessing these natural resources provided to us. and yes there are negative effects of using these resources, Along with a lot of positive ones( like being able to discuss this issue with ppl all over the planet in real time) The world will not be destroyed only changed- and change is the only thing that remains constant
Yes, the Earth has changed a lot over the past 4.6 billion years, including many instances in which the majority of extant species suffered huge die-offs and went extinct. We are currently causing this to happen again, which will be bad for us as well for most other species. Why would we do so when we could instead not do so? Unlike the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and previous catastrophes of the past, this one is of our own making, and is within our power to prevent. Why would you be so blase about allowing it to happen when we could NOT have it happen? We'll all be far worse off for it having happened.
School shootings probably have a similar effect on children’s mental health, too.
Not sure I follow this logic.
The implication being, that if one got through childhood without immediately obvious signs of abuse/neglect then their childhood may not have been as bad they think.
I grew up in the most liberal/educated part of my country and us children would laugh at lunch time about how getting beaten by a belt was so much better than a hanger.
Daily home rules were stricter than what western kids go through when grounded and saying no to their orders was not even an option. (for most)
I grew being occasional beaten by hand and stick. Strict rules were the norm and I never had sleepovers at friends or the like. But, my family allowed me to choose my career, they made huge sacrifices for me, and above all genuinely loved me.
The physical beatings and restriction on freedoms would have gotten CPS called on them in the west. But, I personally have a great great relationship with them and honestly, think I had pretty good parents as compared to my country's average.
People underestimate how many children get a shitty childhood. I will take my imperfect parents over what many of my peers had.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 and marked it off-topic.
I replied that way to the GP comment because those elements were in there. Knowing better: "You may be creating a problem out of nothing." Condescending: "Growing up is not without problems". Condescending advice: "I encourage you to let this resentment go and move on with life". Psychologizing: "You try and find someone to blame and to find some exotic condition you can identify with". Dismissive: "What does validating emotions even mean". Even if the commenter is guessing perfectly and all those points are correct, this is not the way to communicate such information. Indeed, being correct would make it even more humiliating.
In any case, keep up the good work, and all the best.
To an empathic person, that should be pretty obvious...
It's a bit of a misnomer for the process of explicitly acknowledging the emotions that someone else might be feeling, trying to understand the causes of that inner feeling, and prioritizing that acknowledgement and understanding over any subsequent claims as to whether that emotion is unjustified.
Saying things like "You're wrong to feel X, because Y!" is corrosive to trust; it leaves our counterparty in doubt as to whether we even care in the least that they felt X in the first place, or might care in the future about any similar situation. "Validating" X means explicitly giving up that option of attacking their feelings in such strong terms - as such, it's a subtle part of day-to-day diplomacy, especially among people who don't trust each other all that much! And the good part is that, once one has achieved that validation, talking effectively about Y only becomes all-the-easier!
Added - do you think that children always trust their parents to pursue something close to their best interest, and to never victimize them? Parent-on-child abuse of various sorts is a thing, too. And the parent-child relationship doesn't even start off with that kind of trust. Many kids routinely engage in what we would regard as e.g. pathological lying and gaslighting, if adults did the same thing; we only get to think of such behavior as humorous because they aren't very good at it. They do generally grow out of such things as their moral development leads them to internalize the notions of affective empathy and, yes, trust.
Doesn't that imply it should be of minimum importance in a parent-child relationship?