The effects of Domestic Violence in a neighbor's six or seven year old child.

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How do you begin to comfort a six or seven year old who has witness a day filled with ongoing domestic violence between his parents; one ending with his father sitting in back of a police cruiser before being hauled off to jail; crying, "I love you son" from the top of his lungs, while megaphoning to his wife and to the rest of the neighborhood watching, "I didn't do anything. I am going to be away for a year. I am going to lose my job " " his implication today but, previously and often stated loud enough for the neighborhood to hear: "You are a b*tch!"

How do you explain to a little boy who must by now be so confused, so sad, so angry, so frightened, so abused by the abusive behavior of his parents with each other, whose affections   towards his parents must be so split, that he is worthy of love, comfort, safetiness?

How do you help him ease the horror, the embarrassment, the anger?

I have seen him run out to the yard crying a face full of tears and a heart as broken as a water jug so many times before.

Who is there to comfort him, reassure him, love him?

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For some reason, the previous day, while looking up the song, Cuando Sali de Cuba, on Youtube, a link to the May 3^rd, 2013, "Message from Our Lady's apparition at Medjugorge," popped up on the playlist of videos. The part of the message that pounds my head as I revisit the scene from out in the neighborhood is, " " DO NOT JUDGE ""

It would be so easy to call this man a creep, which so many of us around here think he is. It would be so easy to call his wife a floozy, which so many of us around here think she is.

It is so much more out of step and prompted by the "DO NOT JUDGE' part of Our Lady's message, to wonder what sort of pain resides in the heart of this man that has driven him to so many instances of domestic violence and to be the creep that he presents to the world; or, what sort of pain drives his wife to be the floozy we all think she is.

What is the blindness, the barrier that keeps them from seeing that in hurting themselves and each other they are also hurting their children?

What will the pain in their son's heart drive him to be one day? A bully? A sociopath? An uncaring creep? An angry man?   The dance of anger takes so many turns. He is already acting out some of the turmoil that resides inside of him. He has already taken mail out of a neighbor's box. He is also pushing the heavy chain link fence in an attempt to open the entry to driveway which his mother had closed.   He is crying out for attention, love and reassurance. Who is there for him?

  The neighborhood is at peace. But it is a sad kind of peace. 

 

Authors Bio:
E.T.SIMON ... Keeping the Bio Real and Transparent ...
E. T. SIMON is more often like a transplanted palm tree from the land of Santiago de Cuba where she was born to a Cuban, Tulane University, lawyer educated father and, a Mississippi, mother, great-granddaughter of American Revolutionary War hero, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens who is credited with the victory against the British in the Battle of the Cowpens. Although at times, E.T. Simon is more like, the fruit of the pecan of her Mississippi grandparents pecan farm of long ago, or even like the Sycamore so firmly rooted in the Florida Peninsula. As such, the daughter of bi-cultural, bi-lingual parents, E.T. Simon navigated the bi-cultural ties, bi-lingual shores of her birth, while learning to appreciate Cuban and Southern cuisine and cultures, from a very early age.

At the age of 15, two years after her mother's death, she dreamt about running away from her home to join the , "Bohemians" of the 1950s in New York's Greenwich Village and become a writer. She did not. In 1961, at the age of 18 her father sent her across the pond to her mother's family in Mississippi in an effort to keep her from falling prey to Fidel Castro's repressive agents who were on her trail for her opposition to Fidel Castro.
Bumpy rides, or not, In 1976, E.T. Simon, after twelve years of part time studies, with in-between times-off for parenting, obtained her B.A. in English with a Major in Literature and a double minor in Psychology and Philosophy. In 1985 she obtained her Master's Degree in Counseling and in 1987 her License in Marriage and Family Therapy.
Her quest to pursue a MFA in Creative Writing was derailed when a stuffed shirt Chaucer Literature Professor graded her paper on The Prioress Tale short of the A she needed to establish her credentials in the MFA Creative Writing Program, even while receiving the support of the Academic Dean who told her with a certain urgency, "don't stop writing. You'll find a way."
Prior to pursuing her graduate studies in counseling, Ms. E.T. Simon joined a Creative Writing Group where she honed in on some of the art and craft of writing and had the pleasure of attending poetry readings by Tess Gallagher, Denise Levertov, Rutabaga Rose and others.
Following her 1985 graduation, Ms. E.T. Simon proceeded to work as a counselor/family therapist until 1998 when, following surgery, she became a near recluse and has remained a near recluse for the last twelve years or so.
It was during those years that she worked as a counselor/family therapist that Ms. E.T. Simon learned that grief is a powerful agent which often contributes to the derailing of families; that human hearts can bury grief for generations and generations with the grief popping up unexpectedly as a symptom anywhere, sometimes even in someone else further along in the generations.
Ms. E.T. Simon also learned that when careful unearthing of buried grief happens and a person is enabled to truly grieve the pain of a loss they have been holding on to for years, then rebalancing of the derailment takes place and true healing occurs.

Writing is a lifelong love of E.T. Simon's, and whether she kept her writings buried in dusty drawers, or shared them with university professors, writers' groups, editors, or published them, the writer's flame burns undying in her. The flame of truth also burns in her along with the need to stand up for the underdog, of which, today, she finds herself to be one. This blended well in her throughout her years of computer activism for peace and social justice.

E.T. Simon's articles have been published under the name of TERESA SIMON-NOBLE, the pen name of ELENA DUMAS; and at times, under the additional pen name of SKYAGUNSTA, or SKYAGUNSTA PICKENS, both of which are a direct reference to her great-great-grandfather Brigadier General Andrew Pickens who was named "Skyagunsta," by Native Americans who came to appreciate him as a man of conscience. Please also know that whether the articles have been signed with one name, or another; with a pen name, or another, the writings have always come straight from my heart, my perception, and my core values.
In other words, it has always been me, and only me, writing the articles.