A lack of loving connection has grave effects on a child’s character and causes life-long behavioral problems. We can't afford to destroy our children in this way.
Timestamps:
00:16 Report from W.H.O. in 1952 about homeless children describes problem behaviors we see today.
02:16 Conclusion: These troubled children suffered from a lack of intimate attachments, usually with parents.
04:13 A child cannot be emotionally or mentally healthy without love.
06:00 Even a partial lack of love brings on anxiety etc.
07:00 A lack of loving connection has grave effects on a child’s character and entire life.
Transcript:
A Report on the Cause of Behavioral Problems in 1952
Recently I read a report published by the World Health Organization in 1952. They were studying primarily homeless children, most displaced as a result of World War 2, but they also studied children who otherwise had significant behavioral problems.
The author had been a psychiatrist for many years and had surveyed all the world’s literature at the time about child development and the development of mental health disorders in children.
Children Today Have the Same Behavioral Problems
First, the more I read, the more I realized that the report was describing exactly the behaviors we see in children today:
- Whining, anger, arguing, resistance, fighting
- Withdrawal, isolation, depression, suicidal thoughts, failure to connect with others
- Anxiety, worry, frustration, crying
- Short attention span, all the symptoms we now call ADHD
- Lack of engagement with tasks, lack of responsibility
Of course, we’ve added a few problems that didn’t exist then:
- Addicted to phones, games, social media, appearance
- Cutting, gender confusion
Behavioral Problems not Blamed on the World War
But the second thing I noticed was that even though he could easily have blamed all these problems on a world war that had just recently ended, he didn’t. And he didn’t blame governments, or the schools, or a race of people, or systemic social whatever.
In fact, he didn’t blame anybody. I felt like I had stepped into another world, where victimhood hadn’t yet begun to spread like the pandemic virus it is now, much worse than COVID-19.
So what DID he say? He simply described the observations of all the studies he had read, the interviews he’d had with hundreds of mental health care professionals, and his own lifetime of observations. What did he learn?
He concluded that it was not the physical disasters or wars that most affected them.
He didn’t blame “trauma,” as we like to do now.
He didn’t come up with a name, like ADHD, to explain away the real problem.
The Lack of Intimate Attachments was the Cause of Behavioral Problems
He said that “intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves . . . From these intimate attachments people draw strength and enjoyment of life.” And he concluded that children deprived of this intimacy responded to difficult circumstances in a far less healthy way. In fact, he found that the primary cause of mental health disorders in children was the lack of these intimate attachments, usually with parents.
What word could be used to exactly replace what the report called “intimate attachments to other human beings?” This ain’t hard.
The author was talking about LOVE, but psychiatrics and World Health Organization reports live by an unwritten but strict rule that the word “love” may never be used. Why? They don’t know what it is, they haven’t felt it, so how could they describe it?
The report continued:
“Those who had had good family relationships before separation could usually be helped to an adjustment, but those with a bad family background had a poor prognosis.”
“There is a steady growth of evidence that the quality of the parental care which a child receives in his earliest years is of vital importance for his future mental health.”
How many times have I said that? Notice the phrase “vital importance” A child cannot be emotionally or mentally healthy without love. They noticed this in 1952, but they couldn’t bring themselves to call it love, and nobody really did anything with the report.
Report: “What is believed to be essential for mental health is that the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his parent …
“If children don’t get the unlimited love from their parents —
**Wow, the LOVE word. AND they used the word “unlimited,” which is remarkably close to “unconditional.” They SAW a glimpse of this.
(If they don’t get that love,) — they WILL have “revenge upon their parents for not loving them enough.”
They SAW the acting out of children as being a REACTION to the pain of not being loved. A kind of revenge, and we see children every day treat their parents in vengeful ways: disrespect, disregard, ignoring, dismissing, insulting, and even assaulting.
“A child without this relationship SUFFERS—the PAIN we have talked about so often—and this can happen even with a child living WITH his parents, if the parents are not loving.”
1952, they got a picture of it. Didn’t hang on, but they got it.
“Even a partial lack of love brings on acute anxiety, excessive demanding, and powerful feelings of revenge, guilt, and depression.”
“Complete deprivation can cripple a child.”
“If a child is deprived of a parent’s love, mental illness is FAR more likely to occur.”
INTERIM Conclusions of the Report:
“The issue of whether a lack of love causes psychiatric disturbance is still discussed by experts as though it were an open question. [But now] there is no room for doubt” that the lack of loving connection has grave effects on a child’s character and entire life. If further research is to be fruitful, it must pay minute attention … to the quality of the love a child is receiving.”
This report in 1952 is remarkably insightful, and he SAYS that it goes against the science of the day. They ignored it. We’re ignoring it now. We can’t afford to destroy our children in this way.
I’m very hopeful about those of you who are listening to this message right now. It is in YOU that the world will find hope.
