the millions cry

sometimes i am overwhelmed with love for the children in my primary group at school. something so unique about working with the very young is that you can stare into their eyes, and let so, so much love be tranfered just by the eyes. sometimes when i'm with these children, i literally feel the love streaming in in our eye contact, I feel it pouring from my chest to theirs. there must be some way to measure this. this is when i start buying into all the "forcefield" theories buzzing about in alternative literature - when i feel it with such force, and they feel it too - this beautiful attunement that makes us smile at one another with knowing in our eyes. i swear i'm not crazy. i'm just in love. they get some pretty tight hugs and neck kisses from me. sometimes i just know that we 'get' one another, and there is such mutual joy in it. but the crazy thing is, is i know that that's the way that they will love their children, and lovers, and other intimate relatioships. they will have that lived experience of amped-up joy from feelig perfectly intune with another person and expressing it with eyes and loving touches and embraces, and it is part of the deep pattern of their love. sometimes i wonder, how, how do we have so much love to give? how is it that the heart always seem to open to allow for more. How is it that we get to affect one another so strongly. how is it that i am so lucky to give and receive so much love all day long, as an occupation?

and i love that this is the heart of what i study - the biological formation of love, also known as early attachment relationships. how these bright new bodies are introduced into the world of people by being held, cuddled, gazed at, bathed, wiped, fed, played with - all these routines that lead to the bonding that creates a shared emotional life, creating a capacity for deep, shared love, empathy with others. And that all this experience actually changes the architecture of their brains, effecting the deep structures of the mind that regulate sobconscious styles of love and attachment patterns as well as stress responses.

the thing with young children is that they are not able to regulate their own emotions yet. when a young child has emotional experiences (and all the information that enters our brain is processed in terms of emotion. every bit of info passes through the limbic system, a group of primitive structures that essentially determine if the information is safe or threatening: remain calm or fight/flight), they have no framework yet for organizing it. It is the adult who consistenly and lovingly helps them to return to a state of calm that serves as an external regulating force. simply put, when young children do not have a loving attachment relationship, they run the great risk of developing without knowing the joy of social relationships, and having a deep sense that their cues are not meaningful - which manifests in no desire to relate emotionally, and low self esteem. which then manifests in criminal or psychotic behavior.

which brings me to thinking about the children who do not have the luck of being born in a supportive environment. lately i have been reading alot about children in orphanages, violent homes, in and out of foster homes, depressed mothers, poverty, war, hostile prenatal environment, a range of abuses. these unlucky children who come to be so overrepresented in our prison systems and pysch wards. how am i not supposed to see them as the child who hangs out by the fence because he knows that his teachers don't like him, or the one who quietly bites other children because his homelife is so negative that he doesn't know how else to get all the horrible emotion out of his body (how much this is like the opposite of a hug). there is a direct correlation between a child's home environment and their intelligence, between the mental health of the child and the mental health of the parents, and between poverty and intelligence/social/emotional wellness. in terms of negative experiences, it scares me so much how vulnerable our children are to the patterns of their parents, and overwhelms me because the families who need the most help are emeshed in bigger systems that seem so relentless.

for example, the depressed mother living in poverty. research shows that the children of depressed mother suffer similar patters of depression as well. the mother would need mental health services herself, but being poor, feeling guilty, and being financially stressed already would doubtfully seek out help on her own. And even if she did, how would the mental health worker be able to help her gain the confidence and skills necessary to escape poverty. And then if she goes back to work, where do her children go while she works. the cheapest daycare available where one cranky woman takes 'care' of 10 children? what are her options? how should intervention occur so that all the stress and hardship is not passed on to the developing child? what about all the children living in areas of war, or whose parents have died of AIDS, or whose homes are filled night after night with violence, crying and yelling, or who are incarcenated because our society does not know what else to do with them?

i pray that as a society (especially us christians), we would have more wisdom in applying love and tax dollars. That the model of the good samaritan would truly penetrate our hearts. please lord, please...