“How is it then that a beloved parent will be transformed, in the child’s eyes, into a monster? If we look closely into the life of the small child we find that such transformations take place chiefly in those instances when we are compelled to interfere with the child’s pleasure, when we interrupt a pleasurable activity or deny a wish, when we frustrate the child’s wishes or appetites in some way. Then mother becomes the worstest, the baddest, the meanest mother in the world for the duration of a small child’s rage. Now it is conceivable that if we never interfered with a child’s pleasure seeking, granted all wishes, opposed nothing, we might never experience these negative reactions of the child, but the product of such child-rearing would not be a civilized child. We are required to interfere with the child’s pleasure not only for practical reasons which are presented daily in the course of rearing a child—health, safety, the requirements of the family—but in order to bring about the evolution of a civilized man and woman. The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely. So there are no ways in which a child can avoid anxiety. If we banished all the witches and ogres from his bedtime stories and policed his daily life for every conceivable source of danger, he would still succeed in constructing his own imaginary monsters out of the conflicts of his young life. We do not need to be alarmed about the presence of fears in the small child’s life if the child has the means to overcome them. THE”
―
The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
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The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
by
Selma H. Fraiberg780 ratings, average rating, 83 reviews
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