The Forgotten Child: An Unhappy Childhood
A forgotten child, a child who was not loved by his parents and feels forgotten in a corner, in the corner of lack of love. It will remain there for decades, no matter if you are an adult or not. When someone feels that their childhood has been stolen and unloved, they remain attached to that hungry and angry child for a long time; he remains trapped in this trauma of gigantic dimensions.
The book “ Parenting from the Inside Out ”, by psychiatrist and professor Daniel J. Siegel, uses a term that fits well with this child, with this forgotten child mentioned above: the culture of shame. Behind those words that are so impactful lies a reality buried so deeply that we are not always aware of it.
We refer to children who live ashamed, confused because they do not understand why they are not receiving these principles that define a healthy family dynamic: recognition, understanding, love, affection, dedication, security…
The forgotten child is the one who is not valued within his own home. It is the child who asks and does not receive, it is the child who one day realized that crying is useless, it is the person who has never seen himself reflected in his parents’ eyes, in the warmth of a skin or in the shelter of an embrace. The forgotten child has never had a real home and the caress of a voice saying “everything will be all right.” Nobody taught him to believe, whether in magic, in the universe, let alone in himself.
Children of the culture of shame are lost in the abyss of uprootedness, anger and silence. A scary life scenario that, believe it or not, is very common in our society.
The forgotten child, neglected lives
Many of us think almost instantly that these children live in a dysfunctional family. These are certainly environments where internal dynamics are characterized by physical or verbal violence, parental immaturity, the presence of a mental disorder in any of them, marginalization or even some criminal activity that makes this scenario a black hole of emotional maladjustments, insecurity and fear.
We must highlight one very important thing: the forgotten child also lives very close to us. For example, in our neighbors’ house, in that beautiful three-story house whose parents are always kind, brilliant at their work, and extremely busy. Every day they take a silent child by the hand, with a deep and curious look, but full of sadness. This child is also a forgetful child who goes to school from 9 to 5 and from 5 to 8 does extracurricular activities.
This child has the keys to her house, she comes and goes alone, because her parents work all day and come home late and tired. Too tired to interact, listen and participate in the child’s life. Here, obviously, there is no marginalization, nor any kind of violence, but a kind of very clear dysfunction, which can also be considered a type of “maltreatment”: the lack of real love, the lack of motherhood and fatherhood conscious and present perceived by the child.
Nobody deserves to live in the corner of oblivion
No one should live in the dark corner of oblivion. Spending childhood in this subterranean space inhabited by shadows, emptiness and emotional confusion produces in children a series of internal conflicts that, at best, will take decades to resolve. Interestingly, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross herself wrote in her book “Grieving and Pain” that traumatic childhoods also need to go through a very peculiar period of mourning.
The Swiss-American psychiatrist explained in her book that it’s like starting surgery on a series of confused emotions hidden in even more disorganized boxes. It’s a chaotic inner world where you live everything at once: anger, disappointment, denial and depression.
The forgotten child turns into an inaccessible adult, into those people who like to go unnoticed, hiding in their own personal worlds, unable to build meaningful and lasting relationships. Somehow, they continue to live in this culture of shame. So we ask ourselves: why did all this happen, why were you denied the love that we built ourselves as a person?
Nobody deserves to live in the corner of oblivion, least of all children. Our children deserve to be treated with affection, they deserve our time and days as long as the Finnish summers where light is eternal. They also deserve all our patience and comfort that extends to infinity like the ripples of water in a pond.
To conclude, we make a proposal for you: invest in your child and in a conscious education to avoid the emergence of more forgotten children, more lost childhoods. Believe it or not, an unhappy childhood affects the freedom and fullness of our adult lives.
