| EQI.org Home | Society | Teen Advocacy Normal Vs. Healthy
When I was living in South America I quickly realized that it was normal for parents to hit their children and teenagers. I once asked a class of university students in Ecuador how many of them had been hit at home and nearly everyone raised their hand. This reminded me of this important truth: What is normal is not always what is healthy. I will now write back to the person who sent me the email and ask her to look at this page. I will tell her that what is normal depends on your family and your culture. While it is normal to hit and slap children and teenagers in some countries and some cultures, it is not only abnormal, but illegal in others. Even if something is legal does not necessarily mean it is healthy. In most places it is legal to smoke cigarettes once you are a certain age, but it is definitely not healthy at any age. It is also healthy to get away from people who are hurting you emotionally and systematically damaging your self-esteem, but if you are under 18 years of age, and the people hurting you are your legal parents, then it is probably not legal for you to simply walk away and leave those people so you can go live in a place where you feel psychologically, emotionally and physically safe. In most countries it is theoretically possible to get away from abusive parents, but the reality is that this is very hard to do and it is not up to you to decide where you live. Others will have legal and physical power over you until you reach the age of 18, if you can survive the pain that long. It is natural for any of us to get away from people who cause us pain. Or to fight back. But if we are physically or psychologically weaker, it is more natural to try to get away. This is the "fight or flight" instinct. But when you are legally treated like a possession of two other people called your parents, you are not allowed to simply run away. This is illegal in every country I know of. Your instincts tell you to get away, but your society either tells you that you "shouldn't" because they are your parents, or you can't, because it is against the law. I hope that one day these laws will change and teenagers will have more freedom so there will no longer be young people trapped in what I call "teen prison". -- See also the slapping section from the page on emotionally abusive mothers S. Hein |
Other EQI.org Topics: Emotional
Intelligence | Empathy Search EQI.org | Support EQI.org
|
|
| Fries
and Soda From the net
from journals.aol.com/mindoverplatter/ThinkThin/entries/2006/06/14/untitled/773 |
||
| Related |