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Childhood Maltreatment

As I read the post about young women who wanted to start an invisible self treatment program for some of their friends who suffered from addiction [LINK HERE], it reminds me of many conversations I have had with high ACE individuals, especially women, in rural Alaska Villages. When they told about the abuse they were subjected to, they were ordered not to talk about it. And if they persisted, they were shunned. Think about it. If a parent is abusing their children, and the other parent is dependent on that parent, there is an incentive to keep family secrets a secret. I have experienced that in my own family. And once you know, as a child, that the consequences of talking include the prospect of being taken away from your parent by the state, you learn quickly to act as if everything is OK at home, even when it's not.

Child Maltreatment is rampant in the U.S. This study [LINK HERE] talks about the percentage of abuse and the economic consequences we face by not addressing Child Maltreatment.

Early in my studies and thinking about ACE's, I came to the conclusion that we need to start learning how to identify traumatized families, and treat them holistically, that is all together. I realized that without healing the parenting generation, we will have a difficult time ever getting to true prevention.

Criminal charges are a huge motivation to keep quiet in the parenting generation and resist any knowledge about abuse in the household by teaching children to keep quiet and just accept the abuse. The same is true with Domestic Violence, alcohol and drug crimes, and any other negative behavior that is being addressed in the criminal justice system. 

Generally, I will be told that we need to punish the criminals. Yet when I point out that 22% of the original ACE Study population were sexually abused as children, and that adults perpetrated the abuse, it would require putting tens of millions of adults in prison, I am meet with derision. "Punish all the criminals." "Put them away and never let them out." That is not only impractical, but would require more money than society is willing to spend.

This "Conspiracy of Silence" [LINK HERE] keeps our children in harms way, and stops some parents from accepting their complicity in their child's abuse. And it prevents the child from receiving the help needed. Perhaps we need to discuss ways for children to get help even when their parents resist.

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Patrick is correct , holistic treatment for traumatized families is the approach of choice, with the potential for stimulating the healing capabilities of family / kinship networks. "Treatment" however becomes all to often the barrier to bring the holistic resources to the family that can prime the pump of their inherent strength nodes.  A more naturalistic but still skill driven and competency based model of working with these families is required. Our justified demand that children must be protected and families must be helped requires a shift in our conceptual models of child & family helping. It's more than working with them all together, it also what we do with them all together. The "new" approaches to cancer treatment offer helpful analogues. We are inundated  by the various medical approaches involving stimulation of the cancer patients immune system agents to attack the disease agents - "naturalistic" intervention with an admittedly huge scientific technical boost! However it started with a reconceptualization of "treatment" how to help. The family therapy/treatment movement knowledge base is literally bursting with models, approaches ways of working that can be employed with success with traumatized families. However the we must reconceptualize "treatment" into a true helping consciousness with a companion methodology; family workers have to be trained in the role awareness  and methods that "re-humanized" without shedding their expertise and knowledge; in my opinion only a family service movement committed to real family centered values, family serving skills and willingness to working respectfully with the family and the kinship networks. The ACES studies and consequent mobilizations of institutions professionals and (for lack of a better term) lay people represent a golden opportunity to first connect with the reality of the traumatized family.   

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