Posted by:
Anonna-Now
(
)
Date: August 07, 2013 02:15AM
When I remarried, my youngest stepdaughter (then only a toddler) had some very serious reactive attachment disorder issues - only nobody knew what this was back then. She was very clingy with anybody who paid attention to her (even adults she barely knew, which nobody but me seemed to find scary).
Every chance she got, she would get up and "bear her testimony," not because she gave a crap about the religion, but because for those few moments, she was the center of attention, which she craved, and she loved the way all the old ladies crowded around her after the meetings, telling her how much they had enjoyed her testimonies. She positively GLOWED at the attention.
A nevermo friend (psychologist) noticed how this child would approach a complete stranger, start chattering, holding their hand, and even crawling into their laps if they would permit it. The friend said we needed to get this kid into therapy. Her father couldn't see what the problem was - he thought the kid was just an extra-ordinarily friendly little girl.
The friendly little girl got herself raped at 14, went totally out of control, and has been more or less drifting ever since. Promiscuity, alcohol and pot figure prominently into the picture too - and the church stuff has been history for a long time.
Instead of pushing the kids up to the mike, shouldn't we be a little more wary about 1) whether they even WANT to be up there, and 2) if they do seem to enjoy it, is it just because they like the attention? If it's the latter, what does that say about their home life?
In our case, this child was literally unable to amuse herself. You could not put her down with a coloring book and some crayons and ask her to color a picture for you (thinking to get a few minutes to work on supper.) She would take a single crayon, make some scribbles over the page, and then be right back wrapped around your feet again. You could not give her a task to do, like set the table (having first done one place setting as an example.) She would say, "I'm bored. I wanna help YOU." And be right back under your feet again.
I guess because of this experience, I was ALWAYS suspicious of little kids who seemed to LIKE getting up and doing the "I know dis toich is TWOO." business. If they were too small to even say it correctly, what was REALLY going on???