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Therapy Related Articles & Notes

About fifteen years ago I read a book by Alice Miller, For Your Own
Good: Hidden cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, a book
that left a lasting impression on me. Miller was a psychoanalyst who,
after twenty years of practicing psychoanalysis came to the realization
that she could do more good by writing about the parent-child
relationship for the general public. Her earlier work had led her to
the conclusion that parents and teachers can harm children even when
they believe they are acting in the best interest of the child.

I was particularly struck by her descriptions of child-rearing in
Germany a century ago. Miller cited the work of Dr. Daniel Gottlieb
Schreber, the inventor of the Schrebergärten (the German word for "small
allotments") and whose widely read books had an enormous influence of
the way parents treated their parents.

One of Schreber's convictions was that when babies cry they should be
stopped by the use of spanking, assuring his readers that "such a
procedure is only necessary once, or at the most twice, and then one is
master of the child for all time. From then on, one look, one single
gesture will suffice."

In effect, the experts of that period were saying that children were
essentially little savages who needed to be tamed for their own good.
Moreover, the abuse required for this taming process would simply fade
from their minds once they matured into “civilized” adulthood; childhood
experiences mattered only as a means to that end.

As Miller writes, “Many people - motivated by what they thought to be
the best of intentions - complied with the advice given them by Schreber
and other authors about how best to raise their children. Today we would
call it a systematic instruction in child persecution and maltreatment.”
Indeed physical punishment of children was officially condemned the
American Academy of Pediatrics in 1998.

But there is absolutely no reason to think that German parents a hundred
years ago loved their children any less that parents do now. They
certainly did not set out to harm their children. They were simply
using “approved” methods in much the same way that parents today rely on
the advice available to them.

Intellectual honesty requires that we be open to the possibility that a
century from now, some of our own parenting practices will be seen as
having been as harmful as we today view those of 19th century Germany.

My own personal candidate for such a negative “look back” lies in field
of posture - specifically the factors influencing postural development
in our children and the ways in which parents and our schools attempt to
promote good posture.

Most parents of school-aged children have become aware in recent years
of the increasing weights their children are expected to carry to and
from school in their backpacks. There has even been some discussion in
the popular press about the harmful effects these packs have on the
development of childrens' posture.

Nonetheless at the same time, some middle and high schools are now being
built without storage lockers - presumably to prevent students from
storing drugs - thereby forcing them to carry these overweight packs
from class to class. All the while their packs get heavier and heavier.

As I write this, I can picture a small child I recently noticed on his
way to school. He was probably nine or ten years old. I suppose he
would be about four feet tall if he were standing normally. But he
wasn’t, thanks to his immense backpack. It was so heavy that his whole
body curved sharply forward as he trudged along the sidewalk. He looked
a little like an undersized and overloaded Sherpa on his way to Mt. Everest!

What makes me particularly upset is that I know what’s in store for kids
like him once they reach school. They will be forced to use
standardized chairs and desks that make no allowance for the natural
variation in childrens'’ shapes and sizes - furniture chosen to save a
few dollars and make them easier for the custodial staff to stack and move.

To add insult to injury, they may well be required - while sitting in
those horrible chairs - to watch a video on the importance of good posture!

The conditions found in most schools today would never be tolerated in a
workplace thanks to government regulations, union pressure, and the
threat of lawsuits. But they are widely accepted for our kids in
school, even though their young bodies are far more at risk of
developing harmful posture patterns that can lead to pain and poor
physical functioning in later life.

How can loving parents allow this to happen? How could the parents of
the boy I saw possibly allow him to to leave their home carrying such a
heavy pack? How could they fail to raise a fuss about the furniture in
his classroom?

I believe the answer flows from the same sort of blindness that allowed
parents of earlier generations to beat their children. In part this
blindness is caused by genuine ignorance of the effects of heavy
backpacks and poor school furniture design. But I believe the main
reason is a pervasive tendency on the part of adults to discount the
importance of childrens' experience - the same sort of discounting that
Alice Miller describes so eloquently in her books.

I would strongly advice parents to read one or more of Alice Miller’s
books - they present compelling and well-documented evidence of the
psychological harm caused by methods once thought to be good and proper.
And then I would urge them to ask themselves if perhaps they aren’t
inadvertently allowing a harm of a different kind to come to their own
children.

***

A final note: Of course sometimes a child’s posture gets so bad that
parents and teachers take notice and try to do something about it. More
often than not, their advice is to “stand up straight”, “pull your
shoulders back” or something else of this sort. These admonitions are
generally ignored by kids - and this is just as well since the advice is
at best useless. For more on this subject, see “ABCs of Good Posture by
the Father of American Education” at
http://www.angelfire.com/fm/alextech/index.htm and “The New Physical
Education” at http://www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/pe

***

A number of articles by Alice Miller can be found at The Natural Child
Project Website at http://www.naturalchild.org/

Robert Rickover is a teacher of the Alexander Technique living in
Lincoln, Nebraska. He also teaches regularly in Toronto, Canada.
Robert is the author of Fitness Without Stress - A Guide to the
Alexander Technique and is the creator of The Complete Guide to the
Alexander Technique at http://www.alexandertechnique.com