Broken Men

"It is easier to construct strong children than to mend broken men." -- Frederick Douglas

Whether this is true or not is certainly less than obvious. The deficiency of lucidity starts with the significance of "strong children" and "broken men." The ambiguity widens to include how one might travel about edifice a child, strong or not, and the accomplishments and tools needed to mend broken men. If one postulates that "strong children" are children who are well adjusted and that "broken men" are grownups who are maladjusted, the apothegm is likely true.

Adults may go maladjusted, i.e., "broken," after they are adults. This tin go on owed to numerous causes and circumstances; but since Stephen A. Douglas links strong children and broken men, it is just to reason that he is focusing on a presumed connexion between childhood and later big adjustment. His point is that it is easier to convey up well adjusted children than it is to rectify the maladjustment of adults, when the grownup maladjustment is a consequence of a debatable childhood.

It's certainly true that some children turn to be maladjusted adults, despite receiving appropriate developmental support and nurturing throughout their childhood. This sad world gives cogent evidence to the decision that edifice strong children is far from easy and is occasionally not possible. It's also true that inadequate developmental support and nurturing nearly vouch that children will turn up to be maladjusted adults. Further, the badness of grownup maladjustment is relative to the grade of inadequacy: the more than than terrible the neglect, the more terrible the grownup maladjustment.

The concealed truth here is that the consequent grownup maladjustment is usually only partially repairable; and far too frequently, the harm is not fixable at all. The long term personal effects of kid disregard are usually serious and often permanent. A family, community, or society that disregards its children is committed to the creative activity of maladjusted adults. It's as simple as that.

Despite energetic protestation, denial, and eternal rhetoric to the contrary, the disregard of children is extended in systematic in virtually all communities, states, and throughout the country. If you doubt that, expression at the insufficiency of public education, wellness attention for many children, inadequate housing, drug maltreatment and crime, household violence, and the countless of other ways children are being neglected. Look carefully because what you see is the very existent and in progress committedness of community, state, and national leadership to grownup maladjustment, what Stephen A. Douglas names "broken men."

If you are committed to a human race of fewer broken men, a human race where children are valued and not neglected, start with your children and your family.

"All happy households resemble one another; every unhappy household is unhappy in its ain way." -- Lion Tolstoy

Your household is like other households in many ways. It have its ups and downs, strengths and vulnerabilities, its jobs and opportunities. Your household is not perfect nor is it without its minutes of perfection. As is true for other families, yours is somewhere between what you trust it can be and what you sometimes fear it might become. The Buddha expressed the latent hostility of hope and fearfulness like this, "A household is a topographic point where heads come up in contact with one another. If these heads love one another the place will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these heads acquire out of harmoniousness with one another it is like a violent storm that dramas mayhem with the garden." Tolstoy's happy family, Buddha's beautiful flower garden, and your hope symbolize the possible for harmoniousness and well-being for you and yours.

Just as your kid desires your unconditional love and encouragement, you desire him to love you, to love himself, to love other people, and to love the human race around him. You show your love through hugs, playing, and doing things together. You promote him to share his feelings, fears, and frustrations. At the same time, you give him the freedom to turn and to undergo the larger world. You desire him to have got an exciting life of his own, knowing that his human relationship with you is unafraid and predictable.

In addition, you desire your kid to esteem you, to esteem himself, to esteem other people, and to esteem the human race about him. You cognize that much of his mental mental attitude toward himself and toward the human race about him come ups from your attitude about him.

Just as children larn to love by being loved, they larn regard for ego and others by being respected. Your behavior, attitudes, and beliefs will be reflected in your child. More than you may ever know, he "does as you do."

Children also develop mental mental attitudes toward themselves and others as a response to the attitudes and beliefs others pass on to them. In part, your kid will go what you state him he will become. You impart this definition of ego through your physical, emotional, spiritual, and societal interactions with him as well as through the manner you associate as his parent. Beyond these things, there is a whole human race of influences over which you have got small control. Your hope must be that you have got nourished and nurtured your child's potentialities so that he can effectively cover with the multiple influences of the world. You trust that your loving regard have been strong adequate and clear adequate to be integrated into his beingness as he travels out into a human race that may not comprehend him as unique. His sense of being particular come ups from you. You can only trust that it is solid adequate to last him a lifetime.