Off-topic response to Irizary:
[SPOILER=Warning: Spoiler!]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Irizary
That's interesting, but I'm not really sure I agree about that concept re. the showers specifically or other environmental things with children with trauma. I think if something is just "what is done" in the house, and it's presented as a wonderful way to be kind to the environment, or even made into a game or whatever, it doesn't have to be seen as a deprivation. Some people live in very poor situations and have to use their resources very carefully. I think whether that is traumatic or contributes to further trauma has much more to do with the caretakers and how the situation is presented than the situation itself. People can live in mansions with nearly limitless resources and still feel deprived.
Sorry, I probably didn't explain myself well. I've learned so much about children with trauma histories and attachment disorders in recent months, but that doesn't mean I will make myself clear the first time I bring up the subject.
Children with traumatic pasts often have things they do as coping mechanisms because of their histories. Suppose I wake up in the middle of the night and find my four-year-old sitting on the kitchen floor, with sugar all over the floor, spooning sugar into his/her mouth. Simply explaining, "In this house we don't eat sugar by the spoonful, honey, because it's bad for our bodies" wouldn't really help because the child is not acting from a logical place in the brain. Usually these coping mechanisms come from a more basic place in the brain, and it may take time for the parent to figure out what stressor is causing the child to behave a certain way. Forbidding a behavior doesn't help, since that creates more stress for the child. The child is probably not thinking, "Mom says not to do this thing, but I'm going to do it anyway." It's probably more along the lines of, "I'm so hungry. If I don't eat the sugar, I will die. Oh no, someone is telling me not to eat the sugar. I better eat it faster so I can get it before it goes away and there is no more food."
Of course, the parent's goal is to calm the child down so the child feels safe and secure and can behave in socially acceptable ways. If the child lives in constant (non-logical) fear of dying, starving, being kicked out of the home, or any number of other things their brains may be telling them are quite possible outcomes, that is not the best time for an environmentally-friendly lesson. In time, the child should be able to regulate his/her emotions without excessive use of sugar, or long baths, or individually-sized juices, but sometimes parents actually let it go on for a little while so the child can get to a mental place where s/he can talk about what s/he is experiencing and why the sugar, bath or individually-sized juice is so important.
Certainly it may help to have many healthy foods available and to eat at regular times throughout the day. This will help with the body's need for food. But the brain and the body don't always communicate well, especially when the brain's formation was hindered by traumatic events.
I would like to have an environmentally-friendly household. I would also like to be able to raise traumatized children to fully-functioning adulthood. Now and then, this may mean allowing something that isn't the most efficient thing environmentally or resource-wise, but the idea is to move in an environmentally-friendly direction.[/SPOILER]