just made a connection: this summer a Native American activist posed the question to me & a group: why do your people hate children so much (referencing school shootings, separation of children at border, native american boarding schools) and i've been thinking abt that

children are 100% reliant on caretakers. we live in a culture that despises this kind of dependence and teaches us to buck up and be self-sufficient. small children literally can't do this.

the dependence of children on caretakers tears at the ideology that underpins America & extractive capitalism writ large. childhood development disproves the efficacy of this ideology.

& in order to reconcile this cognitive dissonance, white american patriarchal capitalism has to identify the actual child, and the inner child in each of us, as a target of scorn and various kinds of aggression

i am doing a virtual "re-parenting" training right now, for inner child work. so that i can break this cycle in myself. and i think this is also why i have found it so important to me to work with Lakota kids, their elders consider children SACRED.

tapping into our own childlike wonder, joy, connectivity, feels even more dangerous and vulnerable w/in this culture where actual living human children are traumatized almost as a matter of course

but if we can't get in touch with that inner child in order to soothe it and care for it now, as an adult, we will perpetuate that scorn for and avoidance of nurturing for ourselves AND for other actual children

this is some of the personal reparenting / inner child work i've been doing https://yourholisticpsychologist.com/what-is-reparenting-and-how-to-begin/

also: huge shout out to the Simply Smiles Children's Village project. It's an amazing model of what a truly child-centered trauma-informed community could look like https://www.simplysmiles.org/crst-childrens-village

they are currently seeking Native American (registered w/ a tribe) foster parents to join the project, you can dm me for more info. It's a really spectacular group of people working to make sure kids on the Cheyenne River reservation aren't moved off the rex into non-native homes