According to the EvergreenPsychotherapyCenter, which specializes in the treatment of attachment disordered children, research has shown that up to 80% of high-risk families create severe attachment disorders in their children. They warn us: Since there are one million substantiated cases of serious abuse and neglect in the U.S. each year, the statistics indicate that there are 800,000 children with severe attachment disorders coming to the attention of the child welfare system each year. This does not include thousands of children with attachment disorder adopted from other countries.
Infants raised without loving touch have abnormally high levels of stress hormones. They learn more slowly, are behaviorally disordered, frequently fall ill, and are far more violent than their emotionally secure counterparts. If attachment is disrupted during the first three years of life, children can suffer what is called "affectionless psychopathy. They are unable to form meaningful relationships. They have poor impulse control. They are angry. And they don't care anymore. They have no remorse, no empathy. And they've got guns.
Why are children shooting their parents? According to the reports, it would seem almost inevitable. According to one study by Quartz & Seinowski (2002), 15% of 18-24 year olds are "disconnected with almost 4 million young adults neither attending school nor working. Since the 1980's, despite all the Prozac and Ritalin, the number of homicides committed by juveniles has risen 168% and suicides have increased by 140%. It is in fact the third leading cause of death among young people. If they're not killing someone else, they're killing themselves.
Somehow, we have managed to create a population of children with no center and nothing and no one to give them one. Abandoned, alienated, and angry, without hope or conscience, why wouldn't they shoot?
The evidence for that is in the subtle way in which we have moved right past cases like the little boy in Belen, the way in which we have become inured to horror, the way in which we process pain as if we had drive-through psyches. Perhaps it is both cause and effect and we are stuck in a feedback loop that perpetuates alienation and rage, letting the pressure build until the dam bursts and the swell is once again (but not for long) contained. We are simultaneously engaged by horror and disengaged emotionally. We rubber-neck on the highway but we keep on driving.
Yet, I am surprised. I have worked with the traumatized and tormented for more than twenty years. I have been witness and sanctuary to hundreds of men, women and children who have seen and experienced war, brutality, sexual abuse, prostitution, and, worst of all, unrelenting hatred from the people they had counted on to love them. Their stories never cease to grieve or shock me. I am not inured. Each case makes my heart break anew. Each story brings forth more empathy. As far as I am concerned, this is good and proper. We should be grieved. We should be pained. Each time. Every time.
As I watched the last newscast about this child "this little boy who looked at a fairly large weapon, took it up in his hands, pointed it at his father, and pulled the trigger "I struggled not to understand but to imagine.
What was in his mind, his heart right before he decided to aim that rifle? Then, as he wrapped his small finger around the trigger, did he feel his own heart beating or hear the blood rush through his ears and head? Did he feel any urgency to go to the bathroom? Did he think of his siblings? Did he miss his mommy? Did he hear anything, some small voice, some remnant of reason and love and longing asking him to wait? Or was there a dead silence?
What I do know without equivocation is that nearly every child born comes into existence with an instinctive dependence on his parents. From the very start their needs are undeniable and palpable. They cry when we leave the room and cling to us when we return. They smile when we smile. They pout when we pout. It is innate. It may not be "love as adults come to know it, but it is emotional Gorilla Glue. I see it as the most unconditional and purest of loves. Even when we neglect, hurt, or ridicule them, they still want to give us love. Yet, even if you look at it without any poetic mists, it is empirically and biologically utterly reasonable. We are their survival. They need us. What on earth could destroy that most natural of bonds?
The only answer I can offer is that something "on earth "did.
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