Taking back the power of the government
by Cathy Cuthbert
Our children have taken dance lessons since they were four years old at the local private dance studio, which gives me the opportunity to observe many young children and how they respond in class. At one time, the studio had difficulty finding a permanent instructor for the very youngest students, the three-to five-year-olds. This had a disastrous effect on the program, because most of the children – and by this I mean nine out of ten – were so upset that their mothers stopped bringing them. Some of the children would cry and beg not to go into the studio; some went in but refused to participate with a new teacher. “Why is this so upsetting?” I pondered. “Why do they miss the previous teacher so much? She was merely a stranger at 45 minutes once a week.”Contemplating this phenomenon reminded me of Mrs. McGinty, a babysitter we had when we were very young. She rarely came to mind us, my mother being at home, yet we all loved her. One day when Mrs. McGinty couldn’t come and another little, gray-haired lady appeared in her place, I cried bitterly, begging for her. I was inconsolable, even when my mother arranged for her to come the next week. I sobbed all through her visit. No picnic, no games, no amount of Mrs. McGinty’s sweetness and light could make things right again.
Adults use the catch-all phrase that change is upsetting to young children in such situations, but I’ve come to understand the child’s response as more significant. After all, my family has moved four times in the past ten years and our children didn’t find these more significant changes in the least upsetting. Mrs. McGinty’s absence didn’t merely unsettle me; I was not just being cranky that day. I believe I felt betrayed because I had been abandoned, and I think these young dancers felt that way, too. To children – say eight and under, maybe older – anyone who steps in to mind them or teach them is taking on mom’s or dad’s role and becomes a surrogate parent. For this surrogate to then not return is, of course, traumatic.
…Consider this: if being abandoned by one very-part-time surrogate mother/dance teacher is traumatic, what is it to be abandoned by a whole succession of surrogate mothers? And what is it to be abandoned by mom, the Real Thing, when forced to go to day care and school?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/cuthbert/cuthbert10.html
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=405
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=175
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=78