The effect of adult misery on children

Last night when I took what might be loosely called a scenic route through the wild and untamed country of childhood psychology, I referred to a notion that I thought I had posted on before. But when I went looking I couldn’t find it. A good many blog posts seem to have been written only in my head. (And I've since remembered it was written in other spheres.) These days more things make it through the “share it with the world” gate, and I’m a little more relaxed about "online therapy" (but fear not, I have retained some scruples!).

If you’ve been reading here a while you may have noticed that I quote CS Lewis just ever so occasionally. I feel like we have an affinity that isn’t just because he knows Sehnsucht and is a votary of the blue flower, but because many years ago as I read Surprised by Joy I was arrested by this sentence (here in a little bit of context):

Children suffer not (I think) less than their elders, but differently ... They say that a shared sorrow draws people closer together; I can hardly believe that it often has that effect when those who share it are of widely different ages. If I may trust to my own experience, the sight of adult misery and adult terror has an effect on children which is merely paralysing and alienating ... With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.

Reading that was one of those moments when a sentence opens up a whole new dimension you've not explored before. None of us ever had a minutes’ counseling after my father died – back then in country towns you just didn’t – but gradually we’ve all had to trot off as things slowly rose to the surface, and that sentence was one prompt for me. Lewis writes later how, as a result, he “learned to fear and hate emotion” (because it comes in excess at an age when you are you are ill-equipped to manage it), which disturbed me enough to send me to the couch.

And now I shall close the gate.