Robert J. Burrowes PhD has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?

The fearful individual uses violence to try to control the other individuals, objects and events onto which it has projected its own fear in a futile attempt to suppress its awareness of this fear.

The fearless individual has no use for violence because it has no fear to control.

The child is born with the innate capacity to achieve consciousness of itself.

It is terrorised until this capacity is lost.

Human beings will end violence, or
Violence will end human beings.

THE SPECTRUM OF INVISIBLE VIOLENCE

Each item below identifies a parental or adult behaviour that is violent but ‘invisible’ because people would not ordinarily perceive the behaviour as damaging. The bracketed section identifies one or more likely responses of the child although the precise response(s) will obviously vary from one child to the next. The responses might be feelings and/or behaviours; they might be copies or reactions.

• Treat child as a tabula rasa – ‘blank slate’ (child will come to believe that it has no innate, genetically programmed capacity for functional behaviour)
• Pretend, despite negative feedback from the child, that interfering with the genetic programming of the child is both loving and necessary (child will learn to identify abuse as love)
• Do not listen to child’s thoughts and feelings (child will learn to not listen to itSelf thus destroying its internal communication system)
• Do not listen to and accept child’s explanations of its behaviours (child will develop dysfunctional behaviours such as lying and/or wriggling out of acceptance of responsibility)
• Pretend to listen to child, perhaps in a ‘knowing’ way, while waiting for the earliest opportunity to interrupt it to get attention for yourself (child will feel enormous fear, pain and anger, of which it will need to suppress its awareness, as it is denied the opportunity to talk about something important to it and is required to give its attention to you at the same time)
• Dogmatically refuse to listen to child (child will develop authoritarian – intense fear of being out of control – or fundamentalist – intense fear of being wrong – ‘personality’)
• Do not allow child to listen to (that is, pay attention to) itSelf by chronically interfering with its natural inclination and capacity to do so, for example, by comforting or distracting a child that is crying, reassuring a child that is scared, frightening a child out of being angry (child’s natural capacity to become Self-aware will be destroyed)
• Interfere with child’s natural (e.g. exploratory) behaviours (child will become fearful of acting out its natural Selfwill)
• Chronically interfere with child’s genetically programmed exploratory behaviours (child will develop anatomical, physiological, emotional, intellectual and/or behavioural dysfunctionalities possibly including mental illnesses such as anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia and/or phobias)
• Do not communicate (truthfully) with child (child will not have accurate information as one of the bases for its actions and will become increasingly dysfunctionalised)
• Do not let child communicate with you, especially about your violent and damaging behaviours (child will have no avenue for meaningfully resolving conflict and will become increasingly dysfunctionalised)
• Terrorise child out of telling the truth about, and resisting, parental violence (child will suppress its awareness of the truth and be powerless to respond to this violence and the violence of others)
• Do not respond to child’s requests or its feedback about your dysfunctional behaviours (child will be reduced to powerlessly whingeing and complaining)
• Interfere with child’s communication (child will develop communication dysfunctionalities, which usually obscure its actual needs, such as compulsive talking, stuttering, lying, hinting and signalling)
• Routinely interrupt child (child will become fearful of both expressing itSelf and of listening, and will learn to interrupt others)
• Persistently thwart child’s initiatives to do things for itSelf (child will eventually learn to quit easily and might even develop a chronic unconscious tendency to thwart and punish itself as a manifestation of its self-hatred for failing to get what it wanted)
• Keep interfering with child (by frightening it in any number of ways), despite all of its defences, until its submits to parental will and then deny child the time and space to feel its fear, pain, anger and sadness about this interference and its consequent submission (child will be terrorised into surrendering its own Self-will)
• Powerlessly appeal to one child for pity, sympathy and/or support when your violent behaviour is challenged by a second child (first child will learn to perform a ‘guard dog’ function which it will then perform throughout its life; second child will powerlessly vent its anger on first child instead of you)
• Project onto child that it is your parent and that it is responsible for caring for you (child will be caused enormous pain and must grapple with mind-bending confusion)
• Project onto child that you are not the child’s parent (or carer) and that it should have no expectation that you will care for it (child will be caused enormous pain and must grapple with mind-bending confusion)
• Demand that child gives you your due respect and gratitude as its parent (child will be caused to feel fury)
• Present a delusion of always being ‘in control’ (child will learn to fear unusual challenges that nurture initiative and creativity, and will probably end up deluding itself that it needs to be, and is, ‘in control’ as well)
• Pretend to child that you are something that you are not (child might become as delusional as are you)
• Pretend to be and perform a set of social roles rather than being your natural self (child will learn to fearfully act out social roles rather than have the courage to become its genuine Self, warts and all)
• Be anxious with child (child will learn to fear but also have sympathy for anxiety and will probably develop an anxiety disorder, as well as other dysfunctionalities, of its own)
• Compulsively seek child’s reassurance to deal with your anxiety (child will unconsciously learn to reassure your dysfunctional anxiety in the ways that you require and might develop an anxiety disorder of its own)
• Take child for granted (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will learn to not appreciate others)
• Do not let child have what it wants (child will feel stuck, trapped and frustrated, and will probably become greedy)
• Do not let child do what it wants (child will feel stuck, trapped and frustrated, and will behave increasingly dysfunctionally and compulsively, although these dysfunctionalities will not necessarily be easily traced to your behaviour)
• Do not let child say what it wants (child will develop communication and behavioural dysfunctionalities as it keeps trying to meets its needs)
• Let child say what it wants and then ignore or deny it (child will develop communication and behavioural dysfunctionalities commensurate with frequency of occurrence)
• Define child’s needs and wants for it (child will develop a warped sense of what it needs and wants)
• Deny child simple pleasures (child will become addicted to seeking pleasures beyond those that meet its genuine needs)
• Never allow child to have its preference (child will become obsessed with getting its own way in all contexts)
• ‘Give’ to child on condition that it allows you to control it (child will learn that the purpose of giving is to gain control over others)
• Never tell child how you are feeling (child will learn to fear its own feelings as well as your feelings)
• Never talk about feelings (child will learn to fear talking about its own feelings and the feelings of others)
• Do not love child (child will feel that it is unlovable and will not develop the capacity to love itself and to love others)
• Behave as if you do not need love (child will feel as if its love is worthless)
• Behave as if love does not exist (child will not develop the capacity to love or it will learn to suppress and give up using its capacity to love)
• Do not value child (child will learn to not value itSelf and to not value others or the Earth, and will behave accordingly)
• Do not acknowledge child’s help or positive contribution (child will feel lack of acknowledgment as a disincentive to help or contribute)
• Do not show your greater security or happiness when child helps you (child will feel the futility of trying to facilitate change for the better)
• Do not let child interrupt you even when it needs attention for something important (child will learn to fear those who pay close attention to themselves and what they are doing, and may develop a compulsion to interrupt or even violently interfere with people who do this, particularly their own spouse and children, in order to get attention for themselves)
• Conspicuously behave as if you are superior to child (child might become sycophantic of ‘authorities’)
• ‘Play the hero’ to child (child will be disempowered so that it cannot defend and protect itself)
• Play a ‘Poor me, I need help’ role with child (child will learn to sympathetically assist powerless and dysfunctional people like yourself)
• Tell child ‘You are only a child’ (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and Self-love)
• Convey to child by attitude, words and/or deeds that it was ‘an unwanted accident’ (child will feel enormous fear and pain – of which it will suppress its awareness – at not being wanted and loved, and will not develop the Self-worth and Self-love necessary to expect to be involved in loving relationships and, for example, will probably choose an abusive spouse)
• Treat child as unimportant (child will feel unimportant and will treat others as unimportant)
• Treat child as insignificant (child will feel insignificant and will treat others as insignificant)
• Project negative perception of child at child (child will develop a negative perception of itSelf, others and life generally)
• Do not respect child (child will learn not to respect itSelf while, paradoxically, contriving ways to get it from others)
• Do not be thoughtful of child (child will learn to be not thoughtful of others
• Do not like child (child will not experience what it means to be liked and, therefore, will not learn to like others)
• Be inconsiderate of child (child will learn to be inconsiderate)
• Be dishonest with child (child will learn to be dishonest)
• Do not be compassionate with child (child will learn to not feel compassion)
• Do not empathise with child (child will learn to not feel empathy)
• Do not sympathise with child (child will learn to not feel sympathy and, later, to not recognise sympathy when it is offered)
• Do not respect child e.g. child’s personal space (child will learn to not respect itSelf and others)
• Do not respect child’s natural dignity (child’s natural dignity will be worn away)
• Do not cooperate with child (child will learn to not cooperate with others)
• Do not trust child (child will learn to not trust itSelf and others)
• Do not trust child’s judgment (child will lose trust in its own judgment)
• Do not show faith in child (child will lose faith in itSelf)
• Do not be loyal to child (child will not learn to be loyal)
• Do not care about child (child will learn to not care about itSelf and/or to not care about others)
• Do not care about child’s things (child will learn to not care about its own things and/or to not care about the things of others)
• Do not care about child’s thoughts and feelings (child will learn to not care about itSelf and others)
• Never be kind to child (child will not learn to feel what it means to be treated kindly and, therefore, will not learn to be kind to others)
• Never be nice to child (child will not learn to feel what it means to be treated nicely and, therefore, will not learn to be nice to others)
• Ignore child (child will develop one or more compulsive attention-seeking behaviours, such as compulsive talking, and will be unable to give attention to others; it might even treat others as if they do not exist)
• Dysfunctionally/compulsively seek child’s attention and/or distract child from paying attention to itSelf (child will lose capacity to focus intently on itSelf)
• Try to persuade child (child will be scared that it is not allowed to choose freely)
• Complain about child (child will be caused fear, pain, anger and/or sadness as it tries to respond to your powerless and dysfunctional behaviour)
• Demand child’s time to do tasks for you (child will not learn to manage its time in accordance with its own Self-will, it will learn to resent helping others and it will learn to demand the time of others)
• Cajole child into doing what you want it to do, for example, to eat what you want it to eat (child will become fearful that it is not allowed to act out its own Self-will)
• Manipulate child into doing what you want out of fear of dealing openly and powerfully with conflict (child will learn to fear conflict too and will learn to manipulate others as a result)
• Blame child (child will learn to avoid responsibility)
• Condemn child (child will learn to condemn others)
• Insult child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will learn to insult others)
• Deride child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will learn to be derisive)
• Mock child (child will be scared out of clearly explaining itself)
• Goad child into behaving in a way that will allow you to justify to yourself getting angry with it (child will be caused enormous pain, anger and confusion as it grapples with this mindbender)
• Be sarcastic with child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will learn to be sarcastic with others)
• Embarrass child (child will feel embarrassed at trying its best and will learn to embarrass others)
• Humiliate child (child will feel humiliated at its ‘failure’ and will learn to humiliate others)
• Shame child (child will feel ashamed and will learn to shame others)
• Taunt child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will learn to taunt others)
• Tease child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will learn to tease others, particularly younger children and pets)
• Snub child (child will experience enormous fear, pain, anger and/or sadness, and develop a low sense of Self-worth)
• ‘Shut out’ child unless it does what you want (child will be scared into suppressing awareness of its own Self-will and submitting to yours)
• Give child unsolicited advice (child might learn to rely on others rather than work out what to do for itself)
• ‘Motivate’ child to do what you want and pretend that child is doing what it wants (child’s natural capacity to listen to, and act on, its own Self-will is warped and, eventually, destroyed)
• Guilt-trip child into doing what you want (child will learn to feel guilty for acting out its natural Self-will)
• Moralise with child (child’s natural morality will become warped)
• Judge child (child will lose faith in its own judgment, particularly about itSelf)
• Deceive child (child will experience fear and pain, its awareness of which it will probably suppress, and will learn to deceive others)
• Trick child in a nasty way (child will experience fear and pain, its awareness of which it will probably suppress, and will learn to trick others)
• Be nasty to child (child wiild (child might learn to ‘tiptoe’ around you in an attempt to avoid your ‘bad temper’ and will become fearful of acting out its own will)
• Hate child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and might learn to hate others)
• Lie to, manipulate and/or force child to make it believe your opinions (child will learn to fearfully submit to your view and to lie to, manipulate and/or force others to make them believe its opinions)
• Take credit for child’s achievements (child will feel enormous pain and fear at being treated as if it does not exist as a separate individual with its own capacities)
• Exaggerate the importance of your role/contribution to the child’s achievements (child will feel scared that its own contributions to its achievements are not valued and will learn to overplay its own contributions while diminishing those of others)
• Point out child’s inconsistencies and faults while ignoring your own (child will probably become as hypocritical as you)
• Point out child’s inconsistencies and faults while denying your own (child will probably become as dogmatic as you)
• Always adamantly and vehemently deny your dysfunctional behaviours (child will feel angry and powerless)
• Always divert child’s attention from your dysfunctional behaviours, particularly by focusing on any functional or dysfunctional reactive behaviour of the child or others in response to your dysfunctionalities (child will feel frustrated and powerless)
• Lie to child (child will learn to lie)
• Lie about child (child will feel enormous fear, pain, anger and/or sadness at this denial of its existence and it will have difficulty holding onto its sense of Self)
• Do not believe child when it naturally tells the truth (child will learn to lie in an attempt to be believed)
• Do not believe in child (child will not learn to believe in itSelf)
• Ridicule/belittle child (child will lose confidence in itSelf and learn to ridicule/belittle others)
• ‘Put down’ child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and learn to ‘put down’ others)
• Be impatient with child (child will learn to be impatient with itSelf and others)
• Be abrupt with child (child will learn to fear that there is no time or freedom for it to consider and choose what it wants to do and will learn to be abrupt with others)
• Be irritable with child (child will become fearful of your irritability and will develop dysfunctionalities in response, possibly including irritability with others)
• Be devious with child (child will learn to be devious)
• Be jealous of child (child will learn to be jealous)
• Be resentful of child (child will learn to be resentful)
• Be callous with child (child will learn to be callous)
• Be cruel to child (child will learn to be cruel)
• Repeatedly criticise and/or thwart child’s initiatives (child will learn to quit easily rather than become determined)
• Tell child what to do (child will lose capacity to be decisive and to take initiative)
• Routinely tell child that it is wrong (child will develop a negative self-perception and become afraid to admit that it is wrong)
• Never apologise to child (child will not learn to apologise)
• Accuse child of not being itSelf (that is, of not having a mind of its own) if it doesn’t do what you want (child will feel enormous fear and pain as it struggles with this mind-bender and desperately tries to hold onto its sense of Self)
• Approve and/or disapprove of child (child will become addicted to seeking approval and avoiding disapproval)
• Reward, ‘discipline’ and/or punish child (child’s capacity to use its own thoughts, feelings and judgment to make choices will be distorted or even destroyed)
• Contradict child’s complaints, criticisms, condemnations and ‘negativity’ by offering ‘reasonable’ explanations for why things did not work out as child hoped/wanted or by telling child to ‘focus on the positive’ (child will feel unheard and unconsciously suppress its awareness of its natural frustration and anger that would guide it to behave differently in future)
• Criticise child (child will become, for example, hesitant and indecisive, as well as critical)
• Patronise child (child will develop a low sense of Self-worth and will probably, therefore, patronise others)
• Interfere with child’s natural feelings and then its projected feelings (child will learn to suppress awareness of its feelings)
• Project that child is lazy (child will end up not trying because its efforts to help are not recognised and acknowledged)
• Project that child is greedy (child might become fearful of seeking to have its legitimate needs met or it might become resentful of the accusation and greedy as a dysfunctional response)
• Project that child has nothing (no friendship, love or care) to give and then treat it accordingly (child will feel worthless and powerless, and will become resentful of giving, that is, ‘selfish’)
• Require child to behave in ways that do not cause you to have ‘unpleasant’ feelings (child is caught in a paralysing and horrendously painful trap requiring it to suppress the feelings that drive its natural Self-will or suffer punishment for not submitting to your will)
• Deny responsibility for your own feelings by projecting that child is causing them and blaming it for doing so (child is dysfunctionally caused confusion as well as fear, pain, anger and /or sadness)
• Project that child does not love you (child will feel enormous pain and confusion)
• Project that child is ‘getting in my way’ (when it was actually your parents) and thus control its behaviour (child will be compelled to suppress its awareness of its feelings, including its anger, about this projection and control, and will thus develop a powerless and dysfunctional behavioural response, such as whingeing and/or getting in other people’s way)
• Project that child is attacking you and retaliate by attacking child (child will feel pain and blame at not knowing why it has been attacked)
• Project that an activity in which child is engaged (such as waving its fork in the air) is deliberately intended to hurt you and attack it in ‘retaliation’ (child is caused enormous pain and confusion as it grapples with this mind-bender)
• Project that an accident in which child is involved (such as cutting itself) is deliberately intended to hurt you and attack it in ‘retaliation’ (child is caused enormous pain and confusion as it grapples with this mind-bender)
• Do not meaningfully negotiate with child (child will not learn to meaningfully negotiate and will learn, for example, that things get done by telling others what to do)
• Do not share with child what it is reasonable to share (child will become obsessed with claiming resources from others that is not reasonable)
• Expect/require child to ‘help’ you (child will learn to feel resentful of genuine, open-ended requests for help which leave it truly free to accede to or reject as its own will directs)
• Never willingly do anything for child (child will become obsessed with having people do ‘little things’ for it)
• Routinely deny child’s reasonable requests (child will learn to be devious, in one or more of a variety of ways, in trying to get its genuine needs met)
• Resent child asking for help (child will become afraid to ask for help and will learn to force others to do what it wants done instead)
• Always react to child’s requests with irritation (child will become afraid to ask for what it needs and might copy irritated – that is, fearful – response to requests from others)
• Refuse to help child (child will lose its capacity to seek help when it is functional to do so)
• Indicate that you do not want to help child (child will learn to believe that it is unworthy of help)
• Convey to child that it is wrong to ask for help (child will be scared out of asking for help when it needs it and should have it)
• Pretend that you are responding to your child’s request for help when you are really just doing what you want (child will grow up with a distorted perception of what help really is)
• Do not listen to child when it asks for help (child will be terrorised, that is, child will become terrified, child will become terrified of asking for help and child will unconsciously ‘learn’ not to ask for help)
• Terrorise child out of asking for what it needs/wants, for example, by screaming at it when it asks for something (child will become terrified to ask for what it needs/wants, and will develop dysfunctional behaviours – such as hinting, signalling, lying – in order to try to get it)
• Help child when it does not need it and/or has not requested it (child will become dysfunctionally dependent)
• Chronically interfere with child’s natural efforts to do things for itSelf (child’s capacity to become self-reliant will be destroyed: child is now enslaved)
• Force child to say that it is grateful (child will become incapable of gratitude even in situations in which this would be a natural, functional response)
• Require child to ask for what it needs and then say ‘no’ (child will become fearful both of taking what it needs for itSelf and of asking for what it nesituations in which this would be a natural, functional response)
• Require child to ask for what it needs and then say ‘no’ (child will become fearful both of taking what it needs for itSelf and of asking for what it needs from others)
• Require child to seek permission (child will become fearfully obedient at expense of its own Self-will)
• Terrorise child into obedience (child will become fearfully obedient rather than powerfully cooperative)
• Never acknowledge, in any way, the genuine needs of the Self of the child (child will become terrified that it is not allowed to be itSelf and will then become self-obsessed to the exclusion of all others)
• Value disintegrated behaviours of the child rather than caring about the Self of the child (child will learn that it is valued for what it does, not loved for who it is)
• Withhold/withdraw love from child (child will become fragile and vulnerable)
• Intellectualise relationship with child or otherwise remain emotionally distant from child (child will learn to fear emotional intimacy)
• Do not give child anything (child will not learn to give and will probably become greedy)
• Be miserly with child (child will learn to be miserly with others)
• Deny child’s material/financial needs (child will develop a warped sense of its material needs and how to meet these)
• Control child’s access to material resources (child will become addicted to material resources)
• Deprive child of resources or overload it with inappropriate resources (child will become addicted to resources it does not need)
• Do not provide opportunities for child to experience nature (child will not develop a sense of valuing, appreciating and nurturing the natural world)
• Express your fear of nature (child will learn to fear and behave exploitatively towards nature)
• Express your prejudicial fear of women instead of feeling your genuine fear of the specific individuals (male or female) who actually frightened you (child will learn to fear and behave prejudicially towards women, and will develop a negative self-image if it is a girl)
• Express your prejudicial fear of men instead of feeling your genuine fear of the specific individuals (male or female) who actually frightened you (child will learn to fear and behave prejudicially towards men, and will develop a negative self-image if it is a boy)
• Express your prejudicial fear of another racial group instead of feeling your genuine fear of the specific individuals who actually frightened you (child will learn to fear and behave prejudicially towards this racial group)
• Express your prejudicial fear of homosexuals instead of feeling your genuine fear of the specific individuals who actually frightened you (child will learn to fear and behave prejudicially towards homosexuals)
• Feed child unhealthy food e.g. food that is not organically or biodynamically grown, food that is unnaturally fatty or sweetened (child will develop unhealthy dietary habits and possibly chronic ill-health)
• Go to bed after it gets dark (child will learn to believe that living in a permanent state of sleep deprivation is normal and appropriate adult behaviour)
• Give child toys with which to play (child will acquire unnatural and useless capacity to manipulate irrelevant synthetic products rather than learning to use natural artefacts for life-enhancing ends)
• Teach child to play competitive games (child will learn to compete rather than to cooperate)
• Touch child inappropriately, ‘clutchily’, non-relaxedly or otherwise fearfully (child will sense your fear and develop a dysfunctional behavioural response)
• Never touch child affectionately (child will develop dysfunctional attitudes and/or behaviours in relation to touch, perhaps including fear of its own body)
• Imprison child in school (child will be terrified into suppressing awareness of its own Self-will – and the phenomenal fear, pain, anger and sadness this causes – as it is required to submit all day every day to the will of teachers)
• Imprison child in school (child will learn to suppress its awareness of endless insufferable boredom)
• Imprison child in modern house/school (child is structurally denied capacity to develop self-reliance)
• Force child to sit in chairs for long periods e.g. at school (child will develop postural, movement and/or physiological dysfunctionalities)
• Teach child, that is, require child to do something that you want precisely as you prescribe (child’s natural interest, initiative and creativity in learning something new is crushed as it fearfully, mindlessly and powerlessly imitates you; it will also learn, and this is reinforced by experience at school, that learning requires mindless copying)
• Routinely convey message to child through attitude, language and/or behaviour that child is a failure (child will experience enormous fear, pain and anger which, unless expressed, will later manifest as vindictive behaviour in ‘defence’ of its now-warped sense of self)
• Ignore and prevent expression of child’s natural anger (child will learn to take violent revenge on innocent parties)
• Try to control child’s thoughts and/or feelings (child will lose faith in its own thoughts and/or feelings, and learn to try to control the thoughts and/or feelings of others)
• Control child’s behaviour (child will learn to control the behaviour of others)
• Scream at child either occasionally or routinely (child will learn to shut down its awareness of, but cannot shut out the effects of, the fear and pain this causes)
• Harass child (child will learn to fearfully submit to harassment and learn to harass others)
• Harass child when it has done nothing wrong and then scare it out of being angry about this (child will be compelled to suppress awareness of its anger and might react by deliberately behaving in a way that people find offensive and then responding with derision, perhaps by laughing, when they complain)
• Punish child when it has done nothing wrong and then scare it out of being angry about this (child will be compelled to suppress awareness of its anger and might react by delighting in getting innocent people into trouble)
• Threaten, intimidate and/or punish child, e.g. by screaming at or hitting child, if it does not do what you want (child’s fear and self-hatred will increase each time it submits to your will by suppressing awareness of its own, and it will learn to threaten, intimidate and/or punish others)
• Threaten, intimidate and/or punish child to make it accept your perception of itself, others and reality generally (child will lose control of its own mind and become a fearfully obedient slave full of unconscious self-hatred)
• Behave threateningly much of the time so that child lives in a permanent state of fear (child will develop a range of behavioural, anatomical and/or physiological dysfunctionalities possibly including such problems as chronic muscle tension, constipation and an inability to relax and/or sleep)
• Frighten child into submission by using threats and punishments but also some inducements (child will learn that it is futile to resist violence and to fearfully placate violent people by ‘helping’ or collaborating with them in the dysfunctional ways that they require)
• Threaten child with punishment if it does not collaborate with you in abusing other children (child will learn to fearfully betray others to avoid punishment of itself, thus deepening the child’s unconscious sense of self-hatred)
• Threaten child with death using words, tone of voice and/or deeds (child will be terrorised)
• Hit child routinely (child will develop a range of emotional, behavioural, physiological and/or postural dysfunctionalities)
• Sexually abuse child (child might learn to fear sex or become addicted to it, depending on the nature and context of the violence)
• Hold child responsible for your well-being (child will learn to hold others responsible rather than to take responsibility for itself)
• Take revenge on child for what your parent(s), teachers and/or other adults did to you (child will powerlessly learn to not hold the responsible person accountable and to take revenge on innocent parties)
• Inflict emotional and/or physical pain on child (child will initially experience this pain but will progressively learn to suppress its awareness of the pain as it is denied opportunities for feeling it; child will also learn to inflict pain on others)
• Repeatedly force child to do things that don’t meet your actual needs and never feel satisfied with or grateful for what child has done for you (child will feel the pointlessness of helping and then fail to help others who genuinely need and can use it)
• Force child to do what you want (child’s unconscious fear and self-hatred will increase each time it submits to your will; it will also learn that relationships are based on dominance and submission, not cooperation, and it will behave either dominantly or submissively in all social contexts depending on the situation)
• Keep pushing and pushing child to do what you want (child will be terrified that it is not allowed to choose freely and will behave increasingly dysfunctionally)
• Go berserk at child when it tries to help you using its own initiative (child will become terrified of taking independent action to help anyone)
• Blast child for doing things you don’t want and never give positive feedback for anything it does for you (child will try to avoid blasts and will become indecisive and incapacitated by lack of positive feedback)
• Threaten or attack child to convey what you do not want it to do and then fail to give it credit for avoiding doing these things in future (child will experience ongoing loss of energy as it restricts its own life for your benefit and will experience confusion, powerlessness, anger and resentment at the lack of acknowledgment and gratitude for what it is giving up)
• Force child to act against its own will (child will learn to be coercive)
• Force child to do something that it finds terrifying because you are too frightened to defend it and also too frightened to accept responsibility for feeling your own fear (child will be terrorised)
• Force child to do something that is terrifying for it because you are too frightened to do something less terrifying but also too frightened to accept responsibility for feeling your fear about this (child will be terrorised into doing something beyond its capacity and will learn that putting someone else ‘in the rat cage’ is the way to deal with situations in which it lacks the courage to do what feels frightening)
• Treat child as a slave (child will learn that it is worthless and treat other people as worthless too)
• Never accept responsibility for your mistakes and failures (child will learn to evade responsibility for its mistakes and failures)
• Harp on child’s mistakes and failures (child will learn to fear mistakes and failures, and to dogmatically refuse to acknowledge them, rather than learning to perceive mistakes and failures as valuable learning experiences)
• Punish child when it does something ‘wrong’ (child will learn to fearfully deny responsibility for its wrongdoing rather than learning to fearlessly and functionally try again)
• Punish child for making mistakes (child will learn to fear making mistakes and will learn to evade responsibility for them rather than learning to powerfully regard them as valuable learning experiences)
• Force child to accept the blame for your mistakes and failures so that you can avoid responsibility for feeling the fear and pain this causes you (child will suppress its awareness of enormous fear, pain, anger and/or sadness, and learn that avoiding responsibility by blaming someone else – rather than some combination of retraction, apology, compensation and renewed effort – is the way to deal with mistakes and failures)
• Bribe child with, for example, confectionary and toys, to make it do what you want (child will learn that bribery is one way of getting what it wants and that this is an acceptable way of doing so)
• Blackmail child, for example, by threatening to withhold something it needs if it doesn’t do what you want (child will learn that blackmail is one way of getting what it wants and that this is an acceptable way of doing so)
• Extort attention, energy and/or time from the child (child will learn that extortion is one way of getting what it wants and that this is an acceptable way of doing so)
• Steal child’s attention, energy and/or time to use for your own purposes, for example, to listen to your compulsive talking or to do a task for you (child will learn that stealing is one way of getting what it wants and that this is an acceptable way of doing so)
• Deny child’s truth/reality and force it to believe your projection, for example, that child caused your feelings which are actually a projection from your own childhood with your parents (child will be caused enormous fear, pain, anger and/or sadness that, if suppressed, will cause child in turn to endlessly project these feelings onto future interactions with innocent parties such as siblings or, later in life, other adults and, of course, its own children)
• Present a positive picture of child’s life while ignoring and/or denying the negative experiences that are a part of it (child will learn to suppress its awareness of negative aspects of its reality and to act in denial of these, rather than to be aware of and respond intelligently and powerfully to them)
• Ignore and/or deny child’s experience and/or distract child from focusing on its own experience (child will learn to ignore, deny and distract itself from the reality of its own experience and, therefore, from social and ecological reality)
• Be intolerant of child and its unique ways (child will learn to fear its natural Self) Every time that a child is terrorised into surrendering control of its own mind in order to act on the will of another, its unconscious fear, self-hatred, powerlessness and inclination to use violence increase. Thus, the child is taught to be violent towards itself, others and the Earth through an unending sequence of parental and adult behaviours (entailing 9 acts of commission and omission) that, individually, might easily be overlooked or even dismissed as insignificant. In brief, the child’s natural Self suffers death by a thousand ‘invisible’ cuts.

….. will be CONTINUED

 

The violence inflicted by human adults on themselves, each other and the Earth is an outcome of the visible, invisible and utterly invisible violence inflicted on them as children.

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