When adults ‘suffer’ little children

Nov 03, 2019 Countryman, News

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By Dennis Nichols

There is a recurring motif in many of my stories. It is centred on the repugnant actions of adults with little thought for the repercussions on children, usually theirs. It appears that some of us have great difficulty in remembering what it was like being a child; the mystery and wonder of learning and experiencing new things daily, and the implicit trust children place in our judgment as parents or caregivers.
I try. It isn’t always easy. Yet when I ‘box my brain’ and loosen the cobwebs layered over the growing-up and grown-up years, the child in me reawakens to the joyful security and innocence I experienced before the age of nine. As I have implied before, a chunk of that innocence vanished on my ninth birthday – the fiery Black Friday of February 16, 1962. And who was to blame for that. Adults – divisive politicians, propagandists, and interlopers. Thankfully not my parents.
The divisive politicians, et al, are still around today, and in addition to their indirect influence on the lives of children, the latter now have to deal increasingly with the troubling and often terrifying issue of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and the trauma foisted on them by the very ones whose love and protection they need, and crave.
Even the most insightful psychologists and counsellors, I imagine, cannot begin to fathom the mental and emotional confusion and fear children experience when sexual abuse becomes a non-waking nightmare, and domestic violence turns fatal. With the latter, children are often left motherless, fatherless, or orphaned, and that’s what the remainder of this article is mainly concerned with.
Here’s a troubling observation. As adults, too many of us have become numb to the horrors of what is now termed intimate partner violence. Defence and survival mechanisms kick in. Life must go on, and the outrage quickly subsides, until the next fatal flare-up. Now, are the left-behind children of domestic violence also becoming inured to it, and are they being pulled in the same direction their parents and maybe other family members took?
More and more it seems, children, even toddlers, are becoming eye-and-ear-witness to the insane deprivations of the adults, (including parents) closest to them. They hear the insults, the belittling, the threats; they sense the disrespect or the indifference; and they see the physical acts of violence that all too frequently end in bloodshed and death. Innocence dissipates. Childhood ends, or is severely truncated.
Only last week a case of what I will call reciprocal murder occurred, in which a man and his reputed wife were alleged to have brutally stabbed each other to death during the night as their children slept a short distance away. It is said that the four siblings discovered their parents, bloodied and lifeless the following morning. Now I can only surmise as to their individual and collective state of mind as they viewed a scene no child should ever have to witness.
Human behaviour, especially our inclination to violence against each other, is a phenomenon that is still far from being understood. And it seems that no matter how much we think of ways to mitigate it; no matter how hard we try to predict and prevent it, the human mind conjures up some new barbarity and some hideously innovative technique to baffle our best and most altruistic efforts.
Medical science is probing the human brain in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago. One of the latest advances is the brain-computer interface, in which a human brain can be linked to a computer in such a way that brain signals bypass the body’s neuromuscular system, and translate into actions thus, for example, enabling a paralyzed person to write a book or move a prosthetic limb merely by thought. And if, as is posited, the human brain can also be rewired for improved health, why is the ‘human condition’ still in such bad shape?
If medical science can do that, why can’t it probe the genesis and the metastatic flourish of human violence in general and the domestic variety in particular? In many instances it is the kind of subtle, pernicious, build-up that suddenly explodes, and takes both the perpetrator and the victim by surprise, leaving family and community in jaw-dropping shock.
Sometimes though, the signs are clear to those who care to see them. As we all know now, domestic violence killings often leave a signpost trail of lesser evils as mentioned before – threats, intimidation, and the occasional physical assault that is, in a surprising number of cases, interpreted as deep love and understandable jealousy. Few see the manipulator or the potential homicidal maniac, until of course they can no longer see, because they’re dead. Just like that!
And after they are gone, who are left behind? The benumbed and the bereaved – including children whose thoughts and emotions have to ‘adulterate’ overnight, as they vainly try to bridge the chasm that suddenly, and inexplicably, appeared before them. There is a huge gulf that separates living, loving parents from lifeless, bloodied bodies lying on the matrimonial bed that should have been a cushion of love. Think about it, and weep for our children.
In that prodigious ‘book of books’ we know of as the Christian bible, Jesus famously said, “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven.” This was when the adult disciples who were his closest followers ‘rebuked’ them, possibly for annoying the great man with their childish questions and requests. Jesus’ response was a counter-rebuke, and he made it clear that children were among surest heirs to the kingdom of heaven.
Many of us confess a Christian upbringing, if not Christian beliefs. The perpetrators of domestic violence were once children, many of whom would admit to such a background. Now a most preposterous thought has entered my mind. Could there be sane people, adults, who, by some improbable stretch of the imagination, would place a negative connotation on the word ‘suffer’ as used by Jesus?
We Guyanese adults, in our occasional pompous and patronizing manner, love to proclaim that children are our greatest resource; our greatest asset. Then we hurt them with our twisted notions of love and security. We lie to them to suit our purpose and our passions. And we maim, orphan, and kill them. We ‘suffer’ them … not to come to us, but to leave them, neglected, lonely; lost. That is not what Jesus had in mind.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)

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