General Chat

Sadly, I agree, Sharron.

Abused children are trained to keep secrets and I am sure there are many,many children even in nursery schools are in desperate need of help.

Unfortunately, social workers only see what they are shown but I would say that most child abuse is society's best kept secret.

Maggie, I think it's a darned good job it exists now!!

I can't recall whether it has ever changed names over the years.

JoyLouise, it exists now (thank goodness) - but didn't in the 1960's

The instance where young people under the age of 18 can gain direct access to social workers and health professionals. It is why I knew that direct access to social workers existed. This is accessible to all and I think it makes it one of the better services I have come across. I don't expect many infant-school children would have much need for it but you never know nowadays .....

Cut and pasted from Northumberland CC website.

Sorted

Young people up to 18 years old can access the service. We offer:
1-2-1 indivdual support
strict confidentiality, whilst adhering to safegaurding requirements
referral to other services, with the young person's permission. PLEASE NOTE: the young person must consent to any referral that is made.
support to reduce use of substances/stop using substances
multi-agency partnerships
factual, unbiased information for young people about their substance use
We will act with the best interests of the young person in mind.

Sharron, thank you, because my input has not been that of my own experience so not from any practical use on my part but from the point of view of others who have taken practice into the field and from what I had to read decades ago.

I know I can be classed as one of the lucky ones when it comes to parentage. Mine were completely relaxed - my father led the way there. I put that down to his father as Dad lost his Mum at the age of five. It could have been much worse for him with a different father and without having the two older brothers who he spoke about with much love throughout his life. I often wonder whether his attitude to life would have been the same had his mother lived to a ripe old age. .

[edit here: We may know in our lifetime from studies carried out that I have no knowledge about] ... but I believe you're right about stress as one of the causes of cancer. I have always believed it was so. I was rather a serious child and this feeling relating early cancer to stress arose when I discovered my paternal grandmother who died at a young age from cancer lost her first husband and only child within a short time of each other. That I lost a schoolfriend at the age of 32 to cancer, knowing that in her teens she suffered a dreadful accident, added to my feeling of connection between early cancers and trauma. I have not brought myself to read anything about the connection for I feel I may recall it every time one of my children or grandchildren has an accident of any sort.

Thank you for pointing me in the direction of Marion Hawes; I shall certainly watch the clip.

Do you think that the voices of children will now be heard and taken more seriously than ever they were in the past? By that I mean, of course, not only words spoken by them but their attitudes and their interaction with adults in everyday situations. I feel that being able to 'read a situation' is a necessary quality in all social workers but sadly it has taken years for authorities to realise this. Do you think this is so?

Edit: Sharron, I do know of the rush of cortisol in the body when one feels threatened in any way and, as you mentioned cortisol, I expect you made that connection years ago.

JoyLouise, I am glad of your input to this thread, which has become quite a healthy debate, I feel.

Whether deliberate o not, you are representing the view of the 'man on the Clapham omnibus' looking at something you are lucky enough to never have to experience and trying to comprehend its magnitude.

What help could my neighbours have offered? In fact, the woman next door is also a narcissist and I have watched, helplessly, as she bullied her scapegoat son.Other neighbours and,sometimes, even family members, will see the dynamic and not even notice the abuse within because, of course, mums just cannot be vicious, cruel low forms of life.My own family would discuss how vile my cousin was to one of her sons but be friendly to her face and do nothing to help him.In fact, I am now the family pariah for giving her the bums rush at Fred's funeral, in front of the scapegoat son!

The stress of the abuse, I have no doubt, made great contribution to the cancer that killed him and the cortisol that swamped my body for most of my life I have now been able to find out with the information available on the wonderful internet has had a number of recognizable effects.

As well as the stress of the abuse at home, the child of a narc has to interact with the real world while living in the imaginary world in the head of the parent.

I would recommend hat everybody who has ever even seen a child should watch Marilyn Hawes on YouTube.She was an awareness trained teacher whose sone were sexually abused by her friend who also happened to be her headmaster and she has started a charity against all child abuse. In one of her talks she describes how grooming works and that employed by pedos is almost identical to that of the narc to gain control.

Sharron, it's akin to that child whose behaviour was atrocious but who put on a saintly image for anyone in authority such as the teacher. It must have been frustrating for you that neighbours seemed uninterested,

I can see how you felt that social workers were the ones who 'put children away' because it was perceived in times gone by that they and policemen were the ones who did just that.

I guess I was lucky with my parents but I know plenty of my childhood pals who lived with the threat of being put away or calling the kiddie-snatcher - it seemed to be the norm to use that in earlier years. I am not sure that many of them believed it though but I can see that it would affect others who were perhaps more sensitive quite badly.

Even in the eighties I remember the look on my daughter's face when one of her friends said she would get the belt if she did not do something or other. It seemed like an archaic form of punishment in the eighties but one which was not uncommon in the fifties. Daughter had never even heard about 'the belt' as a form of punishment for a perceived wrongdoing and could not wait to ask me whether it actually involved a belt.

You are right, Maggie, I have no knowledge of the role of social workers in the 1960s apart from that of a hospital almoner as a friend was one during that time.

I had no idea that you were a social worker though. It is a job I never even thought of doing and would probably never have picked up books on the subject if I hadn't needed to do so when I was studying.

I quoted the three names of people whose work I had to read many years ago but the words within the quotation marks were my own, also written many years ago. In particular, Garfinkel's ethnomethodology is worth a read by all social workers so you may have read about it. It is a shame that it has taken so long from his writing about what to look for to, to it actually been used in the training of youth and social workers. There will, of course, be many more recent writings but I still think his is pertinent.

I don't think you needed to make it easier for me to understand the difference between physical and mental abuse as both were endemic in schools when I was young and well before that. In fact, I doubt whether anyone I know does not know that difference. However, I believe that the abuse by priests was both physical and mental.

You're wrong about my lack of understanding of child abuse and current social services.

I may have gleaned my information from other sources, unlike you - whose job seems to take you direct into the field rather than purely in an office, but I have two close relatives connected with social work whom I have spoken with regularly over a few decades.

One worked as a social worker before lecturing on the subject, numbering future social workers among her students. The other is a senior social worker of many years standing who deals with disaffected and troubled teens.

Speaking purely from my own experience, I was led to believe that the sole cause of everything was me and that I was very, very wrong in every way. However, my saintly mother was doing all she could, as well as 'telling me things for my own good' in order to rectify the many flaws in my character that I was not enough effort into addressing, to protect me from 'the authorities' who would do I know not what, should they find out what I was like.

Sadly, social workers were part of the authorities and they were the people who had children 'put away'.

We were very well trained to not let anybody know what went on at home and to lie if necessary to make it all look fine.

As I became older, I would try to open conversation with neighbours or family but everybody either changed the subject or strongly argued my 'poor' mother's side. it was mentioned several times that mine was a difficult birth, as if that made it alright..

JoyLouise, I'm guessing you have no idea of the role of Social Workers in the 1960's.
Personally, at the time,I didn't know such people existed - which is hardly surprising.
Here are a couple of people involved in Social Work in the 1960's:
"One person, who had been a social worker’s assistant in the 1960s, said a huge amount of the work was geared towards assessing a patient’s financial circumstances. But the purpose of this was not to determine the amount to ask them for, but to ascertain what benefits they should be claiming"

In her Consumer’s Guide to the British Social Services in 1967, one-time hospital social worker Phyllis Willmott explained that the job was:

"To help patients with their worries and difficulties – either practical problems over work, money, housing, or more personal emotional or domestic difficulties, or a mixture of both. She has (if she is experienced) a wide knowledge of all kinds of social services available; she is also trained to understand and help with the very real and acute personal or emotional difficulties which can lie behind some illness, or be caused by them."

So basically, Social Workers in the 1960's tended to work within hospitals.

Even now, a child can't just 'approach a Social Worker'.
They can access a phone line, a friend, neighbour school or youth worker can approach Social services with concerns about a child - but it would be difficult for a 6 year old to do this.

It's all very well quoting worthy tomes and academics, but you don't seem to realise, the child knows no different - to them, their parent's behaviour may seem cruel and mean, but to them it's 'normal', especially if they're the only child.
This is why it's rarely spoken about. This is why people don't realise until their teenage years, or even later, that they were abused.

To make it easier to understand, as physical abuse is easier to comprehend than mental abuse, just think of all the people who came forward to accuse priests of sexually abusing them in the 1960's.
Why didn't they speak to a Social Worker? Why didn't they complain at the time?
Because, although it was unpleasant, they didn't realise it wasn't normal behaviour and Social Workers weren't what they are today.

However, in recent years, teachers, Youth workers etc have sometimes,been trained to notice certain behaviour traits, and THEY report this to Social Services.

So, I'm afraid your last sentence indicates a total lack of understanding of both child abuse, and Social Services.

If the plea for help and support was made to a social worker, Sharron, then they ought to have seen the problem. I have no idea what era you were a child in but by 1960 enough work had been done by sociologists and psychologists for social workers to have been aware of what to look for.

Look out for the work of Harold Garfinkel whose studies on ethnomethodology are interesting and the works of Hinde and Goffman regarding the aspects of interaction, 'biological factors, structural influences and social processes which constitute the macro-social and micro-social comtexts in which humans operate - but acknowledge that there are many other facets which may be discernible here.'

(The words within quotes are my own from a few decades ago when I wrote about universal aspects of interaction studied by the three people I have mentioned above.)

I am guessing you approached social workers and that is why I wondered why they had not responded rather differently from the way you would have expected.

I agree with you , I was always led to believe I was making a mountain out of a molehill. Several family members tried to make excuses for the evil **** and I honestly cannot forgive them for that as after it died they said they suspected her behaviour to me was unacceptable.

I think it is up to us, the adult survivors, to explain the case to others, even if just for the sake of the little ones to come.

There is no logic to it and people invariably try to explain why the unpleasant behaviour occurred. The more I explain it to others the easier it becomes too but we are the first generation to be able to converse with others via social media and every one of us thought we were alone in our suffering.

We must not waste this gift!

Well said Sharron I agree with you as a victim of it myself

Having a narcissistic parent has been likened to being brought up by a seven year old. All humans are totally self-centred until some time around that age but narcissists never move on.

There is a theory that abuse or trauma can cause this to happen and I wonder if some people are born with a greater propensity towards it than are others.

Sadly, your belief that poor parenting is very widely held and I think this may well be what makes narcissism so difficult to reveal to others. Often the plea for help and support by the victim is seen to be the complaint of a spoilt child who is not able to get their own way with a disciplining parent and ignored, yet again.

People certainly would rather not have to think about narcissistic parenting, it goes against all that society feels comfortable with but it is a very widespread personality disorder that a surprisingly high number of individuals are born with. There is no way to parent it away.

Perhaps I ought to enlarge on my statement.

You are right, Sharron, to the extent that it is an integral part of a narcisist's personality but I believe that all babies are born with the desire to get their own way - so narcissistic in that respect even though I would have said all are born with narcissistic tendencies. It is, I believe a very human trait at that stage but not, I feel, full-blown narcissism.

What makes babies become grown narcissists as we perceive them, in my opinion, is still inept parenting. I did not see the programme but I would tend to agree that Broadmoor is not the place for them as they are not mentally ill. (Is that what was said in the programme?)

I do realise that not everyone holds the same views as me, though so it would be interesting to hear others' views.

I shall now google to see what the programme was about. It's not the sort that I would normally watch but you have raised my interest.

The reason narcissists are contained and not treated in Broadmoor is that narcissism is an integral part of their personality, it is there from birth.Nurture can exacerbate it but not be its cause.

In the knowledge that it is incurable and it will never go away,it should,at the very least,be recognized.Narcissists will always reproduce because,apparently, the right of everybody to have children far outweighs the right of an innocent child to grow up in a loving home that provides the appropriate support and love they need.

RTR - not sure what an out of context clip of a fictional film has to do with anything.

A person's genes may make them more likely to become a narcissist, given the 'right' environment.
A you said, JoyLouise, the treatment of a child by it's carer provides the environment.

It's interesting that in 2019 Eton decided to teach it's pupils to say “thank you” as part of a new focus on how to be more empathetic.
It has also added gratitude, kindness and empathy coaching to the curriculum.
Unfortunately, although the list includes empathy, this isn't for any empathetic reason, it's an "effort to boost 'character' among its privileged students".
So, it's self- serving empathy! :-S

What I find amazing, is that most toddlers know 'please' and 'thank you' - well they do in my family!
Even if they don't learn it at home, they soon learn it at Nursery.
Perhaps 'Norland Nannies' should be taught to teach this simple act to the little 'darlings' they look after!!