Wow! I just read this term in Gabor Mate’s new book The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. and it resonated as what I try to advocate for here in my blog.
This is the quote which comes from Raffi Cavoukian :
At its core, child honoring is respect for personhood. Children are here to learn their own song!
Children’s needs, feelings, development should always be the first priority of a healthy society, for, as Ravi says,
We discover who we are from the inside. What’s forming (in childhood) is no less than how it feels to be human.
And as Gabor continues :
Our culture too often subordinates felt knowledge to the intellect……”we are feeling creatures.”
And if
“emotion is the ground of cognition, the relationships are the tectonic plates that shape that ground.”
The unconscious is always the ground of later intellectual development and we ignore it at our peril. (my words)
Quoting Dr Gordon Neufeld,
Children must feel an invitation to exist in our presence, exactly the way they are.
The child doesn’t have to do anything, or be any different, to win that love – in fact it cannot do anything, because this abiding embrace cannot be earned, nor can it be revoked. It doesn’t depend on the child’s behavior or personality.; it is just there, whether the child is showing up as “good” or”bad” or “naughty” or “nice.”
The child’s most fundamental need is to experience this kind of security in order to mature and develop in a healthy way, when that security is not present, the very foundation of the child’s later development is shaky. When this foundation is shaky the PANIC/GRIEF system of the mental and cerebral apparatus becomes predominant in its activity leading to the incidence of panic disorders and flight or fight responses as well as fawn and freeze as well, as outlined by Complex PTSD specialist Pete Walker, dominating the person’s reactions in later life.
” A sense of attachment security that allows the child to rest from the work of earning his right to be who he is and as he is”
its presence is essential to the foundation of later healthy emotional development and maturation.
Emerging From The Dark Night 