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Thursday 25 October 2007

Blaming childhood things.

Blaming things that happened to us for the bad things some adults do in adulthood has long been the mainstay of people seeking to understand why adults do bad things.

Take this 'chessboard killer' Alexander Pinchuskin as the latest example of this somewhat modern thinking http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7060989.stm.

His mother said she blamed his killing spree on a bump on his head aged 4 years old.

Other examples of this crazy thinking are sexual perverts that are claimed to have been abused themselves when children. Those child beaters who it is claimed were beaten themselves when younger. This list of things that happened to children that are later blamed as reasons why an adult did whatever he or she did is almost endless.

It must cause massive consternation in all those adults who were abused in one form or another as children or had something traumatic happen to them, but grow up into model citizens and parents. To hear these people who claim this or that happened to him or her as a child and it is that which caused him or her to do whatever he or she did in adulthood you would think it should transpire that all adults would be affected in someway and all adults would be out there killing people, abusing children etc etc.

I was physically and systematically abused by my father for many years. Only breaking free of the fear I had for him on the day I saw his body lowered into that 6ft deep hole we call a grave. Did I, as a parent, go on to beat my own children in likewise fashion? No, I did not.

I had my nose smashed into several pieces when hit full on by a swing in a childrens playground. Did this painful and traumatic event as a child lead me to an adult life on the dark side of human nature? No, it did not. If it did anything other than simply hurt it made me more careful of fast moving objects and gave me a constant reminder by way of a constant blocked nose in one nasal passage. Still, I have never killed nor physically abused anyone in the 44 years that have passed since it happened.

One of my still friends from my childhood days saw his mother kill his two sisters, two brothers and his father one fateful day. Only escaping death himself because he went outside moments before it happened to retrieve a football he had left outside. Did he go on to kill as an adult? No, he did not.

There is a very fine line between right and wrong. Between sanity and insanity. Between killing and wanting to kill. Between abusing and wanting to abuse etc etc. But, to blame an abuser or killers reasoning on something that happened to them as a child is to make light of all those who also had something happen to them as a child but did not go on to kill or abuse as adults.

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