When we, working with pain, could neither help others nor live ourselves if all that pain suddenly became our own. On the other hand, it is certainly impossible to make what is filmed not affect the viewer: not to frighten, anger, or sadden them…
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In this post, as a mental health specialist, I will share my impression of what I see in those recordings, because I miss that aspect in the comments I have read.
I see people who, at an important stage of their development, were left alone. Despite all the support, help, understanding, and education that we can provide to children in Lithuania today, they still remained alone with their inner world, with their stormy, life-striving nature, desperately searching for what can be done with the strongest feelings themselves.
No matter how humanistically we do not want to believe it, it is natural for a person to react aggressively to things they do not like. We are not surprised when a three-year-old child, faced with things they do not like, screams, bites, pushes, hits with their hands, throws objects.
We understand that in order to be ready to live in society, they will have to learn to control their aggression. They will have to learn to react in normal ways, without hitting another person, to things they do not like in another person’s words or behavior.
Many adults intuitively guess the age limit by which a child must learn to do this. This limit is about 11 years old.
This is because after 11 years it is dangerous not to control oneself, as one can cause harm that cannot be repaired. This is the difference between a child’s and a teenager’s world. After 11 years, the strength is already enough to hurt a person so badly that they cannot be healed. All the children seen in the recordings are beyond this age limit…
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What, in my and many colleagues’ opinion, society still does not understand is that a child needs adults in order to learn and become capable of controlling themselves. A child alone cannot do this.
Both in psychology and history, even in literature, we have various facts, testimonies, and works of art about what happens when children are left alone. Have you read “Lord of the Flies”? One of the most phantasmagoric examples of what happens when children are left alone.
So in these recordings, a child psychologist first sees children who at a certain stage of their development realize they are sadly alone and try to survive in the “Lord of the Flies” world.
I don’t know, at that time adults were working, burying, or celebrating, but the children had no chance to lean on anyone. They had too little support and adult leadership, which is necessary to grow and learn to control oneself.
And what needs to be done is to turn back and gather all those who were left alone by the book, class, or screen, because this is the daily, most important calling and work of an adult. Children.
This post was shared by psychologist psychotherapist Vytis Valantinas on his Facebook page. 15min publishes it with the author’s permission.
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