I make something I love every day but in my case my work intersects education and healthcare at its very root: I am nurturing babies and young children.

They are the biggest contribution any of us can make to society. Babies and young children are our future. If we do not nurture babies from day one they will consign us to nursing homes filled with dubious staff members just as many (most?) parents all too often consign their babies into the care of centres (which may call themselves schools, even Montessori schools) with the high possibility of likewise dubious staff members.

Those who attend Brooklyn Beta are arguably the brightest and the best at what they do. Where then does it leave their babies and young children? Is it really good enough to consign them to those who are possibly at the bottom of the brain rung?

I can freely say this because I have worked in a child care centre-come-school for four years after many years of successfully caring for and educating young children (and my own) exactly the way I wanted. My methods have healed emotionally delayed children and aided those with Down’s Syndrome to be the best they can be, and I’ve sent several neurotypical children (what used to be called ‘normal’ but now sadly no longer ‘the norm’!), including my own two sons, out into the world to make it a better place.

After much debate in my own brain and within my family I have determined that in our facility we have a destructive 29 year-old Infant Lead teacher who has never had a child of her own.

How can I combat this person and her, now obvious, ‘personality disorder’ that has already severely delayed the emotional and physical development of five baby boys during my tenure, all with their parents’ unwitting consent?

We are all stymied by the support given this person by our inexperienced 30-something school owner (albeit with her own two children, questionably somewhat delayed).

You might well ask why I haven’t moved on. That would require a long, very drawn out answer - I suggest you read some of my earlier blogs and you may discern why I find myself in this predicament.

My goal now is not to allow anyone to ‘break’ the majority of the babies currently in our care. ‘Fortunately’ for the majority of babies in our care our Infant Lead teacher always chooses one baby each year that she makes her priority. But that also means that every year one baby is deprived of optimal development at the same time creating tremendous staff stress because the other five infants are in the care of just one other staff member!

The other Infant staff members (not just me) are well educated, substantial and diligently serve to compensate with the extremely high standard of care we prefer and advocated by RIE/Magda Gerber (rarely seen in most daycare facilities).

Yet those five remaining babies simply make ‘satisfactory’ progress not the ‘excellent’ progress that I expect and too often demand! Their progress would be so much better if we had a genuine and highly competent 2:6 ratio. With a 1:5 ratio there are some challenges as everyone caring for babies knows - what mother with quintuplets can manage by herself?

I would love it if I didn’t see a blog about a geek’s 4 month-old baby in which the infant’s four favourite films are posted (three are cartoons)! That baby could already be on the downhill run, developmentally speaking, as I have seen many times before.

As the brightest and most intelligent of your generation it behoves Brooklyn Beta participants to create the most well balanced offspring you can. Your child will always be different - look at his parents! But let him be different from the mainstream, let him make a difference in this world.

Don’t be afraid to stand out from the pack in the real world. Your child could make a remarkable difference, if only you give him the foundation he really needs.

Videos, DVD’s, educational TV, ipads, iphones (sadly, all the accoutrements of your daily work!) are not what he wants from you. He needs you to be truly available as a human person. You need to be able to fill him up each day in such a way that he’s self sufficient, cooperative, emotionally balanced, physically strong, HIGHLY VERBAL AND COMMUNICATIVE and well nourished, before you even entertain putting him in the care of others.

He needs to be able to tell you that he’s not happy with what our family called ‘red flag people’ - those they instinctively knew weren’t safe, reliable or trustworthy enough to be around.

I know you are the generation that went to pre-school and daycare and feel “I did OK” but the fact is that you could have become so much better than ‘OK’ had you been at home with your mother (even Donald Winnicott’s ‘ordinary good enough mother’) in those early years to help you truly develop the essential basic skills you needed for true life long learning to occur.

Now to making something I love.

I prepared our oldest son for school at five-plus little knowing that the very informal preparation we were modestly doing in a loving household was way beyond that being done by other parents who had already consigned their child to full time daycare at age 2. Our son had nearly four more years to grow and mature at home - only for us to discover that he was overly ready for learning and the school couldn’t offer anything for him: “We aren’t obliged to offer anything more” said his principal. The good news is that he wasn’t a behavioural problem or an emotional basket case but that first year at school did ‘break’ him from one wonderful habit - inventive story telling.

The alternative? Extreme. Home education. I made something I love - oh boy did I! Then I did it again with our next son!

Now there are at least two unique, contributing adults out in your world and in mine - they work hard, they play hard and they care about their family and making the world a better place.

What more could you want out of ‘a career’?

‘Make something you love’ and start with your babies and young children!

Part of the reason that music isn’t always in my world, much as I have CD’s that I absolutely love, is firstly that my own CD player (I have yet to move to having my music on my phone or owning my own ipod!) isn’t in an accessible place to be permanently plugged in, secondly I am rarely at home by myself, but perhaps more to the point our main home CD player setup has always been too complicated for me to operate!

However, music is vital in my world of working with babies and toddlers. I regularly try to sing to one, or several, knowing each of them well enough to understand their favourite tunes. Sometimes it just involves singing a fun song or even a made up one that’s personal to the child, sometimes it’s singing along to a favourite nursery rhyme in a book. (I always tend to ‘read’ the book afterwards so that we can diversify the experience and label more of the characters in the book - adding broader vocabulary, vocal expression and actions too).

It is disheartening most days to work with one colleague who really doesn’t love music, especially music which works well with children – even pleasing classical music!

I perform music therapy experiments in our classroom almost every day. Asking myself if I have a special song which will captivate at least one child. I am grateful to one family whose little girl loved ‘Baby Beluga’ - when we finally got the book in our classroom I started singing the song as best I could - apparently I was close enough because she always sat and listened! It even became a tool, a reward, to persuade her to cooperate, and she did.

I offered one of our 15 month olds the chance to listen to my sons singing barbershop harmony - it was a quiet day, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken out my phone and pulled up youtube! However, this experiment has been remarkable because of its effect on that child and that I’ve been able to repeat the same piece of music once a day for several days and get the identical response from her: she peacefully lays against me slightly swaying, occasionally burbling along and asking me to name the four singers (which I’ve done each time we listen and watch). She now calls them ‘boys’ because I ask her if she wants to ‘hear the pretty music with the boys singing’.

Conversely, one other more agitated, dysregulated and emotionally unstable 18 month old simply said “No, No” when I played it. Barbershop harmony didn’t calm him. For him I tried a little comedy song that I sang from my childhood, and my children’s, called ‘The Bee Song’. I really just sang the refrain for him, but he loved it, it made him feel happy and he smiled and laughed a lot! I repeated that experiment for several days until he transferred to his crying state in our Toddler classroom. No one knows the song there and sad to relate I’m not sure it would fit in their ‘programme’ either, however he does seem happier than he’s been in more than 18 months!

It is even sadder to relate that no other teacher seems capable of using ‘my’ type of music therapy with our babies.

In my experience my ‘music therapy’ renders these babies calm and happy - what more could we want of music?

Contrast that with the recorded music used in our Primary classroom wherein the words and the voices are garbled (as in so many ‘made for children’ CD’s), even though the sentiments of issues like ‘recognising strangers’ are most valuable. The response last week of the oldest child (almost 5) was quite telling, to me at least: “Why do we have to listen to this every day?”

I feel that such a song would be better taught by the teacher’s voice alone in her very clear diction. The effect of learning by rote from a CD was brought to my attention after the school holiday party when that oldest (and probably brightest child) in the Primary classroom lead the group loudly singing for me ‘Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer’, ending with ‘…he’ll go down in my…ste…ry’ NOT ‘hist…o…ry’!

We need to be close to and facing our babies and young children as we teach them language through speech or singing - otherwise they simply learn the garbled version from CD’s, DVD’s and TV, and, as I discovered several years ago, language learned that way is extremely hard to correct!

Let’s all expand our musical repertoire and share those riches to create a more amenable learning environment every day.

I don’t know how many of you have watched cartoons with the sound turned off? When you finally do you will instantly recognise that you can’t understand a word that’s being said. You can’t lip read a cartoon. We adults need animated human faces to interpret what’s being said - which is also why phone texts are so often misinterpreted, they lack the emotional intent of face to face conversations.

Lip reading requires the speaker to be genuinely animated and expressive in their conversation - what’s called ‘prosody’: how we put the emotional foundation, meaning and interpretations into our conversations. That’s why I always talk clearly to babies and from about age 9 months, sometimes younger, I read to babies using plenty of sounds and changes in my voice tone - such sounds (made using…the lips!) force the child to look at your whole face and hopefully grasp meaning from your language and total expression. When I read or sing to babies - they get it! It’s a fun way to learn.

I recently reflected on several families (close to 10 or more now!) I personally know where at least one child struggled with their early use of language. In many of those cases the predominant babysitter of choice at home was……cartoons! Help!

Many of those children as babies were also not held when drinking a bottle once they could hold it themselves, or did not have a cozy nursing relationship (by observation I noted that the mother and child connection wasn’t present at what should be this most tender of times). Consequently those babies missed out in so many ways on connecting with their mother’s, then their carer’s, face, reducing even the possibility of lip reading let alone good eye contact.

The other week by chance I read in an online newsletter new parents had proudly published about their 4 month old that they included ‘her four favourite movies’ - three are cartoons! The parents do comment that they try to limit her viewing, but…she’s only 4 months old! I was aghast and this new research from FAU goes towards proving my theories.

We really need plenty of genuinely animated human contact from birth to become genuinely animated human beings.

Perhaps that’s how we’ll subvert the autism epidemic. Join me!

I now understand the benefits of moving far away (4000 miles) from my family and my quite traditional English upbringing. It has given me a chance to find out who I really am and what makes me tick; not without many trials and tribulations of being very foreign living for 39 years in America!

So how do we learn the range of emotions to become a wholesome human being? What separates a person with a full range of emotions at their disposal from those who show little or none, or even go to emotional extremes, like those with autism or other related developmental delays, or even individuals whose emotions are crippled by their childhood or early adult experiences?

I have decided recently to revert to my blink impression of adults I meet. I was very outspoken before I was 5 years old but of course growing up in England what I now call my ‘clarity of thought and observation’ was promptly squashed! Deemed impolite. Those thoughts are still mostly underground sixty years later, which is probably why this blog is my most useful personal tool – whether or not I have many followers!

Such memories have come to the fore with correspondence in the early part of this year from a fellow student from my primary (elementary) school era who also turned up many photos of us together from that time. He is the only person to ever confirm that one particular teacher ‘disproportionately picked on me’ in the year I was about 12 years old (we had both transferred to another school at 11, typical for an English education). I remember well being profoundly uncomfortable around that teacher but had no recourse through family or school.

Such treatment apparently had a profound effect on my fellow student, especially the fact that he could do nothing about it – he even named one of his daughters after me! All these years and I never knew how big his heart was! But it’s wonderful, life-affirming news to receive.

Which gets me to how we treat tiny babies and young children. I have a question in my mind about people who are very ‘gushy’ with babies and yet have no apparent warmth towards their colleagues. The same individuals can be angry, mean and absolutely horrible to 2 year-olds whose behaviour they can’t control! I should note that the two people I’m thinking of have absolutely no child raising experience, teaching experience, in fact no skills at all with young children!

So where do our emotions ‘go’? How is it that we have no range of emotions as adults and then we observe the next generation having the same lack?

It all stems from our childhood. As a first time mother I was initially very much the same rigid unemotional mother that my mother seemed to be. I thought that was how one behaved, it never occurred to me until more recent years that my mother had had certain tragic experiences in her early 20’s during WWII that profoundly affected and stunted many of her emotions when she had me 5 years or so later.

I’ve come to know life can be otherwise. It doesn’t mean that our children aren’t loved but I don’t think our oldest son was initially shown how beloved he was in a cheerful and passionate enough way, with enough emotion. I hope he disagrees!

Adults missing that feeling of being truly beloved (not simply “I love my baby, I miss him so much”) from infancy usually show it each day. The façade of caring that those adults present to their children is usually well ‘over the top’, is unstable (by which I mean it’s not consistent) and can turn to the reverse emotion at any moment and that turn cannot be predicted by those around them! How do you think a baby feels when he is treated or cared for in such an unpredictable way day after day?

He ends up feeling very confused about his world. Even otherwise happy children become moody and emotional by age 3 when there is sudden emotional turmoil in their family life – like sitting in the middle of an unexpected, acrimonious divorce (what young child can anticipate all that his parents’ divorce entails?).

I am starting to think that seizures in young children are another consequence of an emotionally confused childhood.

A lack of a range of appropriate emotions seems a prevalent ‘disease’ in the under 3’s. Shouldn’t they seem happy most of the time? Shouldn’t they simply cry when life isn’t going well or they really hurt themselves and then be easily soothed by a loving carer or parent?

It doesn’t seem to happen. In my experience most 3’s and under are angry – some one year-old babies wail or scream to get what they want, some are virtually struck dumb, and what seem to be a very rare few, at under a year of age, have a range of emotions and are thus easier to read, teach and assist – for me at least.

Anger prevails in the 3’s and 4’s mostly due to spending vast amounts of time watching DVD’s (frequently depicting some sort of violence!) of movies, cartoons, etc. instead of interacting with their parents, family and friends, teachers and playing outside. They aren’t making human and natural connections in their daily lives.

All this doesn’t bode well for future generations.

I now understand my own lack of emotions plus emotions sometimes being out of control when bringing up my oldest son for his first three years – he reflects the same complex mixture of emotions thirty years later. When his brother was born I feel I was more human and confident in myself and he reflects that greater balance of emotions. Both are thankfully extremely kind people so I don’t think I got too much wrong!

My late father, the third child and only surviving son of then older parents, was beloved by his family growing up, highly respected by all those he met in his working life, and is greatly missed by us all for his emotional stability. He was always available to listen and help us. He seemed to be well balanced for most of his life and had only seriously lost his temper on a very few occasions and for very good reasons, well before my brother and I were born. He wasn’t an angry or unpredictable man.

There is a time and place for warmth, happiness and humour – just about the only emotions a baby needs to see.

Gradually we adults can incorporate a serious face towards the end of the first year of life. But the balance for discipline needs to be so full of genuine kindness and love that it alone is the only tool needed to steer young children in the next 4 years – and then the foundation is in place for a solid future of cooperative behaviour and learning well.

Passive, baby-pleasing parenting, coupled with frequent anger towards one’s child, spouse, work, family etc. doesn’t make for an emotionally stable child, ready to learn.

We parents and caregivers are so responsible for how a child learns from their earliest days – understanding ourselves and our emotions well allows us to teach at the highest level from day one.

We don’t yet know if she’s musical (although we know she loves music), or has perfect pitch, or has one of millions of other possible abilities, strengths and attributes which will stand her in good stead as she grows up and (hopefully) develops her passions in life. But it is critical that we carers recognize her burgeoning abilities in all facets of her daily understanding and communication. (Sad to say I’m the only experienced intuitive carer right now)

Here’s my other problem. I believe her mother is self-centred – she whines a lot when she picks up her daughter and cannot seem to grasp the need for a calmer and happier transition time at the end of the day. Meaning, she can’t put her daughter’s emotions before her own needs.

“Give me my hug” or “I need my hug” are her ‘commands’ to her 15 month old at the end of the day. The mother doesn’t seem able to wait for her daughter to come to her or to allow her daughter to say goodbye to her carers - whom she loves, by the way.

And she’s not the only mother who acts that way!

Parents (mothers and fathers) mostly don’t accept that their children form strong bonds with their carers. I don’t think they even think about what happens to their child in the 10-hour day their child spends with us.

The attachments young children form, to parents and carers, can be healthy or otherwise – I’ve seen both and more frequently see unhealthy attachments to parents and carers resulting in severe emotional and behavioural problems. Not forgetting the litany of possible developmental delays I foresee in that child’s future.

When the attachment to a carer is healthy it is because the child has a very strong and healthy attachment to their mother AND the mother also values and respects their child’s healthy attachment to the carer.

The whole relationship is mutual and all parties to those caring relationships understand their own pieces of the puzzle. Their mutual primary focus is the health and neurotypical development of the child.

Let’s respect every child the way we should.

Why is it so hard to explain respect?

It was Magda Gerber’s (RIE) rule of thumb for caring for young children and I know it works. But sadly I now also recognise that her method only works if we have experienced respect throughout our own lives and show it in everything we do with every person, with every child.

Respect can’t be explained.

Since this blog largely focuses on our responsibilities to the next generation and how we educate them and ourselves, after a miserable week working in the childcare facility I am currently compelled to work in, I started brainstorming about my ‘user experience’ – horrible – and compared it to what I think many staff members and most of the children (but also their parents), must be experiencing.

Babies who scream, loudly, aren’t have a good ‘user experience’ whether with their mother or a staff member.

Two year olds who cry every day ‘for no apparent reason’ aren’t having a good ‘user experience’.

Three year olds who throw themselves on the floor, pee or poop in their clothes on purpose to make their point or are willfully misbehaved day after day, obviously aren’t having a good ‘user experience’.

Four year olds who accidentally bang their noses on a friend’s shoulder and then go off into a corner to cry about it, being unable to turn to a familiar staff member for comfort, aren’t having a good ‘user experience’.

A four year old whose language is severely delayed isn’t having a good ‘user experience’ if no adult talks to him for the three hours after they’ve said “Good morning”!

And these situations all happen in one place. There are other children screaming, crying and voicing their miserable ‘user experience’. I can’t always differentiate who I’m hearing from behind a closed door although I know instinctively the daily ‘user experience’ of each of the babies in our room, some are having very good experiences, some very sad, some just awful.

Couple these situations with staff ‘user experience’:

Lifting a heavy toddler up to a standard 36” high counter top which also really isn’t long enough to let the child stretch out and you to change their nappy (diaper) - who thought that one through?

No step stools for teacher to reach high storage cupboards - basic ‘risk management’ for any facility.

A washing machine and dryer that were set up so that the doors back against each other when open and all wet laundry has to be passed over those two doors to get to the dryer!

How frustrating must it be to deal with the child who refuses to cooperate and throws herself on the floor every day – ‘for no apparent reason’?

What carer or teacher goes home in a sane mind when one or more babies or children have screamed at her most of the day even when she is one of the kindest most child-focused people on the planet?

What happens when staff members don’t have the supplies they need – sometimes it’s as simple as no gloves (!), paper towels, no rags, no cleaning materials, no tissues (in a daycare?!). The issue isn’t that we haven’t added to the owner/director’s shopping list – she just doesn’t understand how not having these tools renders us incapacitated when attempting to run the expensive programme she is selling. #verypooruserexperience.

Lastly, think about the parents. They occasionally get a newsletter – perhaps the second one has been written in 2011 and it’s November. The latest newsletter came through on parent’s phones (and mine) in a very garbled, unreadable format - what sort of ‘user experience’ was that?

When you are paying a vast sum for your child’s care and you have been sold/promised a specific programme/standards by the owner, it is that owner’s responsibility to make sure your ‘user experience’ is top notch, as with any purchased product or service.

There was obviously no UX plan in place when the school was opened.

I unwittingly had a UX plan for my own children and those I cared for in my house. My plan has proven itself over and over as I watch my grown sons, at work and at play, and the positive developmental trajectory of other children I’ve influenced over the years.

My personal UX has worked out well, for me for the most part and for my husband and my children.

Think about the UX of your own babies and young children - you (and only you) can make it better.

You died nearly two months ago. I am still writing and storing these blog articles on a beloved iMac which is over 10 years old – thank you. In so many ways I haven’t moved with the times and yet thanks to Steve I have. I am fortunate to have one of the larger Macs as my ‘big’ computer – I am so not in touch with names that I don’t know what model it is! I just know I was given it by my passionate Apple sons so that I could begin an online college course in January 2010 – I passed with a 4.0 grade point. That was a first for me! Thanks Steve.

My two sons have been passionate about Apple and Macs for more than 20 years since a friend mentored their passion before the web was ‘the web’ it is today.

I remember when my 17 year old oldest son was putting together an interactive exhibit for the Seminole Museum in the Everglades and I asked “Are you sure those ‘pad things’ will last?” I was referring to the touch pads now used on all laptops! Of course they’ve lasted but the exhibit has been dismantled. I don’t know if touchpads were an Apple invention but I feel it fits the profile.

Didn’t I say there’s a lot I don’t know about computers?

Steve gave us all passion and creativity and the desire to strive to reach his level. Most of us won’t even come close, but we can keep on striving and learning and inventing.

One day I hope to have an iPad. It’s one of the few new ‘toys’ that I’ve really wanted. I see a lot of potential for it as an educational tool, especially for children with developmental delays. I’m sure many parents have found it of great help – I’m just not sure that they don’t use it more like a video game and TV – it is a cheap babysitter after all. Truly a shame because the possibilities are endless to really help lots of young children I know.

I am lucky that my sons have already given me an iphone. I love to take photos with it and Instagram is a great iphone app to play with. So in some ways I am current!

The emotions and tears I felt when Steve died are still with me. It’s strange to feel so sad about the passing of someone you didn’t know. No one at my school even mentioned his name or noticed that I dressed in jeans and a black top the after he died – that was even sadder.

But Steve Jobs influences and inspires at least three members of our family to be the best they can be, in so many different ways.

Belatedly - thank you Steve.

Now I understand why my own use of language with young children is so effective. I have learned over time to use a range of emotions, tones and inflections to get my meaning across and, because I am a fairly balanced human being I do not get angry with tiny babies and toddlers.

I find that many of my colleagues and parents I know are ‘over the top’ in many of their emotions. They are often too verbally and physically affectionate in words, tone and action (artifically so in many cases - using words everyone expects them to say but without really meaning what they are saying) and well before a child is ready or skilled enough to respond, other than refusing to approach that person!

Those who work with young children need to be particularly well balanced in their delivery of physical care and language in order for their charges to trust them and thereby make excellent verbal, physical and emotional progress.

Children who don’t make excellent progress in all realms (those who fail to thrive) often have parents who lack balanced emotional reactions too. It doesn’t make them bad people but their own emotions and often stilted use of language definitely affect their children’s development in a negative way.

So, when any one of us doesn’t ‘get it right’ in the first year or two of life we ‘get it wrong’ and children are then set up for a poor (less than optimal) developmental trajectory.

Remember - prosody’s the word, I hear the opposite every day!

‘Neglect’ includes assuming that any and all daycare situations are fine for your babies and toddlers and that it’s perfectly OK for your baby to be in a container while you ‘work at home’. I’m not going to explain ‘container’ to you.

If you start thinking now you can be the protectors of the next generation ensuring that their minds and bodies aren’t damaged by ignorant caretaking.

We all know that there is ignorant and careless caretaking in nursing homes – stories abound about the neglect of someone’s grandma and continue to horrify us. But, by the same token, if you don’t know that it’s happening at the opposite end of society you are sorely missing the boat and will permanently damage your child (I guarantee it because I’ve seen the damage on so many occasions, over a period of over 30 years).

Why would it be good for a child who is four and has very poor language skills to attend a school where it is customary (and by the way, considered ‘good’) for that child to work in a morning three-hour work period and not say a word to anyone!!! Saw it last week.

Why is it OK for a 5 month-old baby not to look all her carers in the eye? Saw it again yesterday. And for those carers not to be worried about it or the fact that the baby screams so loudly ‘for no apparent reason’, especially when the carers already know that the baby’s four-year-old brother still doesn’t have good eye contact with teachers he knows well, adults or his friends!

Why is it OK for two three-year-olds from different and unrelated families to parrot virtually all the language they hear and yet have little or no physical and emotional control of themselves?

These are the children of ‘successful’ parents – doctors, lawyers, etc. attending an expensive school.

Without children being their parent’s priority for at least their first five years they don’t stand much of a chance of being productive. And if they aren’t productive and communicative when they are three or four years old what hope is there for their future?

I’m warning you – step up to the plate and worry less about which minivan you need to buy to transport your children, or the new fashionable outfit/pushchair/cot for your baby (not forgetting the litany of other objects, including an ipad for your four-year-old, that you can’t stop yourself buying as a ‘good’ parent!) and worry more about the content of your baby’s brain – who is filling it and with what?

You might even consider not nursing your baby because ‘it looks good’, something a mother is supposed to do to appear to be doing the right thing, when your baby constantly reflects the fact that neither you nor he gets what should be passed through and by the nursing relationship!

Your behaviour is destructive to your baby and to those around you who assume you are nursing and caring for your baby for all the right reasons – you’re not!

Get in touch if you’re having problems with your baby! I’ll give you some clues…that is, if you are ready to change your own behaviour for the true good of your child.

But only when you’re ready to change!

It is only when you meet dynamic, kind and passionate individuals either in your family or out in the world that you realise how much better your life might have been. This year I met a man who was at school with me and he is the first and only person to tell me that he was very aware, when we were 12 years old, of me being treated badly by one particular teacher and that he was also very aware that he could do nothing to help me. Observing such treatment profoundly affected his whole life. Despite the challenges of his own youth he became a man capable of giving of himself to his wife and family.

I am extremely grateful to have met him and come to know him and his wife more than 50 years later.

My father was the youngest child in his family of three children and beloved only surviving son of, by then, much older parents. He reflected that loving care his whole life.

My mother enjoyed a warm relationship with her younger brother, just two years younger than herself. They grew up in the days of having housemaids to care for the children, not in the echelon of ‘nannies’. She married my father shortly before he and her two brothers went off to service in WWII. I know her world collapsed no more than a year later when her beloved younger brother was killed when the Royal Air Force plane he was aboard crashed into a mountain in north Wales.

She was just 21 when she had to find her father at work and tell him what had happened to his 19 year old son. His colleagues knew by the look on her face what had happened, saying, “It’s the boy isn’t it?” When she finally reached her father and told him the sad news all he could say was “Poor Mum, poor Mum”. My grandmother is reported to have cried for days after the news was delivered – who wouldn’t? Her baby was dead.

Years later my mother told me that only one of her many aunts asked “How’s Joan?”, enquiring after her own well being after such a loss.

This trauma was hers alone to endure until she died in July at 92.

What I now know is that just as that pain made my grandmother tough which was reflected in her distant care of us, I now think it had the same effect on my mother’s delivery of care. She could no longer love anyone with the passion she had loved her brother – something inside her had died.

I also feel it was a contributing factor to her having Alzheimers in the last few years of her life.

I was born 5 years after my uncle’s death.

I now know that I am the child of a mother with PTSD. Her brother’s death, coupled with various other traumas, stresses and anxieties she endured during her WWII service as a Land Girl (The Women’s Land Army) now makes it clear to me that she had undiagnosed PTSD her whole life.

Move forward 65 years and in my daily work in an early childhood care facility I’ve become aware of young women, some are mothers, who have endured some sort of childhood trauma – emotional deprivation or manipulation, alcoholic parents; sometimes unidentified pain – it runs the gamut.

Those women, and probably men too (I just see more young women in my work) aren’t really capable of ‘giving’ enough to their babies or partners or the children they care for. They are very clinical in their ‘love’, finding it easier to give material things like toys, blankets, bottles, food, than their very selves.

When Donald Winnicott spoke of ‘the good enough mother’ I don’t think he was thinking about people whose childhoods disabled them. He was genuinely thinking of women who were good hearted and trying their best, not those who had been crippled by their own childhoods.

Since I’ve also read a lot about autism spectrum disorders and even cared for babies and toddlers whom I’ve suspected might end up diagnosed as autistic, I’ve reflected a lot on whether such children had parents who were traumatised in their early years rendering them unable to ‘give’ of themselves. Through long-term observations and conversations I’ve learned that I am right. I received further information yesterday that confirmed my thoughts.

Next on my list is to buy the book that makes the connection between autism and PTSD.

PTSD cripples children and adults. Have you ever seen children who are struck dumb by going into the care of a perfect stranger? I’ve cared for one.

Have you ever seen a toddlers adopted from China and Korea, for example, traumatized by their ‘phasing in’ in an American daycare less than a year after they arrive in the country – nevermind what goes on in their new home? I’ve seen one from each country adopted by the same family. Not a happy sight/experience for child or teacher!

Such children have lived in the trauma of orphanage care in their home country (reportedly more than one orphanage), then get moved to a country where no one looks like them or speaks their language……and then they’re put into a US English speaking daycare because their new English speaking mother (from England) thinks it’s good for them! – wouldn’t you be traumatised at age 2?

Bettelheim’s ‘refrigerator mother’ does exist – I see them every day.

Those refrigerator mothers’ emotions were crippled way before they had their children – it’s just that no one recognised it.

Unless people recognise their personal trauma and how it has affected their emotions they will spend the rest of their lives in an emotional roller coaster.

And in that state they ‘attempt’ to bring up healthy children – it just isn’t possible.

I see it every day.