All behaviour is communication, and screaming is perhaps the most desperate form, literally crying out for the loving nurture that will save their brains from pain. Only with love can we wire our brains right, for empathy, for logic, for self control. That's when we respond rather than react, are responsible rather than impulsive. That's when everything gets better and we all heal and find joy. And it call comes back to that moment when we choose how to respond to the scream of a precious child, that soul at sea, that brain in pain.
If the child's scream was ever answered I never heard it. In the daytime his mother walked him from their apartment to daycare and back, then at night it was always the same. I could just see his face, red and wet with tears, terror in his eyes, crying himself into he oblivion of sleep. That's what passes as loving child care these days, better than sticks and beatings, but not much.
Toby screamed like his body was rebelling against his existence - as if he'd arrived in a world that made no sense at all. His skin craved cuddles; his mind craved the rocking sensation of being carried by his mother. The outcome was the same as every other time, a shout, then ignored - his training to be an "easy child" had begun.
The scream was pain put into the air, writ large for anyone who cared to help end it. In the end what she got was a spank, sending her mind into a spasm of desperation until the inevitable shut down response.
The child's scream came from a place or terror, telling of a mind lost in absolute fear. Were she an adult there would have been immediate concern, empathy, perhaps the help of a counsellor - not for Jade. She was eighteen months and everyone said attention would "spoil her."
The scream was primal. It had a raw intensity to it that told of urgency, of desperate need. Human brains didn't evolve in environments where there was the safety of walls, cribs and cuddly toys. All that kid knew was that Momma was nowhere close and he was as scared as an adult would be in the forest at night.
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