Children and Fairy tales - is lying okay?
Lying to children is not a good idea. Even fairy tales and cartoons need to be presented as not real - over-playing the "realness" of Santa or other stories eventually gets revealed as a lie.
The importance of telling children the truth and remaining worthy of their innate trust in parents and adults, is a topic of a recent post by Ehden Biber: Do not lie to your children, (Substack). Ehden doesn’t mention the Santa issue, however staging elaborate scenarios about Santa or the Tooth Fairy or other characters will eventually be revealed and then the child may feel crushed by disappointment about the beloved character and about their parent.
I grew up and tried to pass along that Santa is the Spirit of Generosity that can be found within all of us - even Ebenezer Scrooge. One of my family traditions was listening to my dad read The Christmas Carol aloud - it was a little long and boring, but it was my dad reading to us, so we listened. I think he identified with Scrooge, and he would say “Bah humbug” about holiday festivities.
We never had the Elf on the Shelf watching game, and I don’t miss it. I always found the idea of someone always watching me a little creepy rather than reassuring. Maybe because I don’t have faith/trust that watching is benevolent, for my aid. Child trauma can leave you with trust issues - because your trust had been violated so often you may not realize you have boundaries of your own which you are not only allowed to defend - but totally expected to. Oh.
Fortunately, Crappy Childhood Fairy is here to help. Anna Runkle shares her own insight as a trauma survivor with Chronic PTSD about “Emotional dysregulation”. That may be a more general term which could also describe the histamine hyperexcitability issue that I have been trying to describe in recent posts. She also emphasizes the point that once started, the dysregulated mood can’t be stopped readily. To regain control the person needs to recognize sooner that they are tipping over the edge and break the cycle - pause, breathe, leave, give yourself time to calm before “the airplane takes off”. Once the jet is in the air, that dysregulated emotion is unlikely to stop until the gas runs out or the plane crashes, or the plane crashes when the gas runs out. ← TRUE.
Trauma Causes Emotional Dysregulation: Here's How to Heal It, Anna Runkle @CrappyChildhoodFairy (Youtube)
Something that frustrates me the most about “mental health awareness” - is that when you are in an irrational state of mind then any actions taken are not “choices” based on “rational decisions”. Being irrational is not a choice - if you don’t know that eating yogurt is a causal factor. Once you know that eating yogurt can cause the mood meltdowns, than that might be a choice to avoid.
Encouraging someone with mental health problems to make better choices is a little like sprinkling salt in a wound. Thanks for rubbing in the fact that bad stuff happens to me and I can’t seem to do much about it besides feel more pain about it, thanks for the salt.
The biggest lesson to relearn as a child trauma survivor though, is that NO - YOU DO NOT DESERVE PAIN, or punishment, or no comfort or love. Those are common themes toddler trauma survivors have learned. At that age the child brain feels responsible for events because they think of themself as the center of everything else.
Caregiver is there because I need her/him and I can trust they will help me feel fed and warm and comforted.
or
Caregiver is there because I need her/him and sometimes they help and sometimes they hurt me, but they are all I have so I have to try to figure out how to be quiet enough, or sweet enough, or obedient and fast enough, to get their help instead of getting more pain or fear.
… or be sexy enough. Note - about “grooming” - the lonely child is very susceptible to being taught that if they let that happen, and also that, and maybe start doing that too, and keep it our little secret, then there will be LOTS of LOVE and caring and maybe presents! What the child may not realize is that they may be dropped as soon as they are the wrong age. Or that it will soon include drugs, and maybe other adults, and then more…and more… It may also later leave that person as an adult sexually attracted to the age group they had been when first sexually active as a child or adolescent. Men who want boys to be legally able to “consent” to be sexually active may once have been a boy introduced to sex at that age. It is also risking addictive behavior associated with sexuality - that was thrilling, more sexual contact is needed, then more. It may leave other peers endangered as the once naive boy may seek out other smaller people to have a thrill with.
Over-sexualization of media is happening and it isn’t about whether we can see a specific naughty spot. If we can see the overt sexualized body language or ‘dance’, then it is too sexual for young children. When I was a child in the 70s there were no advertising images with overt sexual poses. Swimsuit ads were demure. Lingerie ads often were of just the clothing item. Now there are drag shows and twerking contests with children present or even at schools. I had to look up the word twerking because I had never heard it before sweet little Miley showed us how grown-up girls can twerk. This is adult sexual behavior and should not be around children or adolescents. Their innocence is theirs for so little time - not some ad company’s right to take, and often from as soon as the child is born. Toddler cartoons have overtly sexual mermaids. Why?
We all make mistakes because we are human, and humans inherently are somewhat irrational because of our nonverbal instincts. Babies are adorable and their energy may be life promoting - healthy to be around. Aristotle recommended old people and children by cared for together, as they are good energy for each other. News to me - the Greeks also had Care Donkeys, like we have seeing eye dogs or helper monkeys, to give a little extra comfort or fetch a blanket.
Care for the Elderly - Greek Style, by Christopher Xeneopoulos Janus, (ref). *This reference doesn’t mention the young children being healthy to be around part. I read about that years ago, may be in an older blog.
Touch is healing. Often my mother wants her hand held, she is afraid of being alone, and is just afraid far too much. It has gotten better with low histamine diet and methyl folate supplements. As a prenatal and infancy counselor, I know that babies often need to be directly within the energy and heart/breathing rate of a caregiver, in order to help keep their own body regulated at an even tempo. SIDS in part may be babies left all alone, just forgetting to breathe again. When the infant is with an adult, then their breathing and heart rate starts lining up with the adult’s. This response is strongest in newborns to about two months old. (1) Maybe my mom needs a donkey. The pet cats have been very helpful, maybe we will stick with the cats.
Why overtly sexual toddler mermaids, though?
Currently, it seems like more than just a mistake on the part of media programmers. Pedophilia is being written about more and more in the media as something the public should accept, cannibalism is too. Eating children or abusing them is not okay - even if rich celebrities say it is okay. Even if sit coms on TV start suggesting it is okay.
Integrity is knowing your values and sticking with them.
One of my early jobs was as a lab tech in a genetics lab. I got to feed and care for the animals among other tasks. Breeding pairs have to be separated before the litter is born or the male will eat the babies. Female animals who don’t bond with their infants soon enough also may eat their babies. Are humans better than mice and rats? It doesn’t seem like we have made it far enough yet.
It is lying to oneself to ignore the factoid that almost a half million children disappear in the United States - EACH YEAR.
Covid isn’t really the problem. Child trafficking is.
Emotional overeating.
I digress - thanks Crappy Childhood Fairy - Emotional dysregulation is a very important topic which Anna Runkle covers very well. She also has free workbook type materials on her website. Trauma Causes Emotional Dysregulation: Here's How to Heal It, Anna Runkle @CrappyChildhoodFairy (Youtube)
One caveat - for overeating guidance, BrightLine, is a recommendation within Anna’s video notes. It may be helpful for people with extreme disordered fullness control, but otherwise it is teaching extreme control tactics and measurement of every meal and recommends food portions and an overall balance that may not be adequate when followed as strictly as recommended. It may be helpful for some people, but I cannot endorse it as a stand-alone diet plan. No dietitian seems to have been involved in planning or evaluating the portion recommendations or overall meal plans.
For my own binge or emotional overeating problems what helped a lot was reading the suggestion that deprivation was a BIG part of the underlying issue. Over-eating from a subconscious fear that there won’t be more later. What helped was a tip to ALWAYS have healthy snacks packed, and plenty, and maybe make some very small fragments, and try to only eat to appetite, just a few pieces might be enough. NEVER FEEL DEPRIVED. It helped. I had grown up with disordered eating in my parents - sometimes binging was allowed because everyone was, and other times food was strictly controlled, and treats were hidden (we kids found stuff anyway).
For the emotional overeating, of course, I had to learn to recognize that loneliness or anger were what I was really feeling, not hunger. Tactics while I was working on the problem initially included, stopping as soon as I recognized that I was eating for comfort. I would spit out the food into a napkin and stop - or that is what I tried to do in order to regain control and it did help. Emptying the package was also an old family habit - why leave only a few chips? - Just eat them! We did have a Clean-Plate-Club style of family meals and that is really not a healthy way to teach children how to learn their own fullness and hunger signals. Shut the bag when you are satisfied, even if there are only a few left.
This Binaural beat guided meditation CD, Weight Loss Meditation | Slim Naturally | Brain Sync, also helped me work through my emotional overeating and body armoring - my throat would spasm shut when I tried to talk about emotional topics, or anything I felt strongly about. Silence was golden in my childhood home - and strongly encouraged. The CD text talks about relaxing the throat and really focusing on food as you swallow, and that helped me become more aware of my constant body and throat tension issues with both communication and food.
Awareness is just a first step. Then comes the practice of shutting the chip bag when you notice you are mindlessly munching, or angrily; and then not buying the chips and buying salad ingredients instead - and preparing them - and maybe pulling invasive plants as a healthier outlet for an angry mood.
Something to note - an “angry mood” can occur due to chemical/food changes and may have nothing to do with being angry about a particular thing or person. Our rational verbal mind always wants to find a reason for our feelings, but it is a huge step forward in self recognition to learn that our moods can just be moodiness, and a nap may be the best bet.
If there was a point, I wandered from it. Lying to children breaks their trust in you, a trusted adult or caregiver, whether meant for holiday fun or because it seems too adult of a topic - eventually truth is revealed, and trust is broken. It doesn’t repair well and needs to be rebuilt through reliability - being trustworthy.
I learned this with two parenting issues - toddler called preschool “pretty school” and we thought it was cute and just let it continue - eventually preschooler is hurt because classmates made fun when the truth was learned. Later - Why? Why had we let the wrong word be learned? Oh, sorry, (parental chagrin) (it was cute).
Worse in consequences, and not really a ‘lie’ - after years of encouraging healthy eating by my child, which included talking about carrots helping with night vision/seeing in the dark (I didn’t get into rhodopsin with a four-year-old), …. later grade schooler no longer trusts my nutrition information because her teacher - who knows stuff - said No, carrots don’t help you see in the dark. Splitting rabbit hairs here, vitamin A is needed for night vision, low-light dusk settings, or flashes of light at night. No, it doesn’t work like night vision goggles - True. But thanks not-a-dietitian grade schoolteacher - next time please include the rhodopsin in your lesson plan!
Rhodopsin is a pigment that appears reddish purple because it absorbs green-blue light. It is the pigment in Rod cells which are active in low light settings and are very sensitive as long as bright lights aren’t over saturating them. Headlights at night make normal night vision worse. The Rod cells would be most helpful if you were out walking on a moonlit night and had no flashlight to over activate the Rod cells. While Cone cells which can differentiate colors are active in brighter light settings and require more light, brighter light, in order to be activated.
And the kicker is - you can’t have rhodopsin without vitamin A (or beta carotene from carrots). “All rhodopsins consist of two building blocks, a protein moiety and a reversibly covalently bound non-protein cofactor, retinal (retinaldehyde).” (107)
“The "visual purple" rhodopsin (opsin-2) of the rod cells in the vertebrate retina absorbs green-blue light.” (107)
“Rhodopsin, also known as visual purple, is a light-sensitive receptor protein involved in visual phototransduction. Its name derives from Ancient Greek ῥόδον (rhódon) for "rose", due to its pinkish color, and ὄψις (ópsis) for "sight".[5] Rhodopsin is a biological pigment found in the rods of the retina and is a G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). It belongs to a group of photoswitchable opsins. Rhodopsin is extremely sensitive to light, and thus enables vision in low-light conditions.[6] When rhodopsin is exposed to light, it immediately photobleaches. In humans, it is regenerated fully in about 30 minutes, after which rods are more sensitive.[7]” (108)
“Rhodopsin of the rods most strongly absorbs green-blue light and, therefore, appears reddish-purple, which is why it is also called "visual purple".[12] It is responsible for monochromatic vision in the dark.[7]” (108)
**Wikipedia (108) does not include the information about rhodopsin being in our skin, (109, 110) making blackout curtains at night helpful for our circadian cycle (and making sleeping with the TV on unhealthy - for an adult or a child or an infant). Night lights with a dim reddish hue (think glowing campfire coals) will be less disruptive to night vision than a brighter white light.
*The Rhodopsin section is an excerpt from Retinoids and Schizophrenia - the post (#20 - Retinoic Acid addition) that got way too long to be a post and remained a document instead. I summarized some highlights in the post, but the document contains more of the science background.
This post needs bread-crumbs - Hansel and Gretel style.
Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.
Reference List
Suga A, Uraguchi M, Tange A, Ishikawa H, Ohira H. Cardiac interaction between mother and infant: enhancement of heart rate variability. Sci Rep. 2019 Dec 27;9(1):20019. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-56204-5. PMID: 31882635; PMCID: PMC6934483. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6934483/
NYET!