Voluntary Visions | Trivium method of critical thinking, Voluntary Communication, Non-Agression Principle, and more… Tribe of Dan and american flag. Stateless Society - Index. Decline To State. Willfreely. The Importance of Empathic Parenting. Swiss therapist and author Alice Miller does not mince words: "Any person who abuses his children has himself been severely traumatized in his childhood... there is no reason for child abuse other than the repression of the abuse and confusion once suffered by the abuser himself. "1 How, then, does an abused child overcome painful experiences enough to give his own children more love than he himself was given? Are such children, as they reach adulthood, doomed to repeat an endless cycle of anger, abuse, and retaliation?
Or are there ways to stop the cycle, and learn more empathic, responsive ways of treating children? While every hurtful parent was himself hurt in childhood, repetition of this pattern is not inevitable: some abused children grow up determined to give their own children the childhood they missed. My father, who was sometimes beaten, and sometimes belittled, by his father, expressed it as the desire "to give my children a better life than I had. " Dr. Artwork by Liam3747.
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