Our definition of our child abuse is simple: whenever the spirit of our child is disrespected the child is abused.

We know that the mind is shaped by our activities. Regularly practicing loving-kindness meditation can help activate and strengthen areas of the brain responsible for empathy and emotional intelligence and regrow our traumatised minds.

Our definition of our child abuse is simple: whenever the spirit of our child is disrespected the child is abused. Abuse of the spirit of the child can take many forms, from the overt forms of child abuse that conventional society is able to accept – such as overt sexual abuse, physical violence and the extremes of neglect – to whole realms of abuse that fall below society’s radar and are considered normal and healthy forms of parenting. 

Children have massive needs, and where parents fail to meet these needs – whether society notices or cares or even bats an eye – the child ends up abused. Children are born into the world with a total right to have all their needs met. This is the responsibility of parents, and although parents have a whole palette of ways and techniques to deny their responsibility and pathologise defenders of the child, this does not change the basic facts.

Children experience torture when their needs go unmet, and while we might sound like a fanatic writing this, it is only because we are taking the deep emotional side of the most disenfranchised minority in our society: the child. This is something that so few – and so few parents, those largely false advocates of society’s most innocent and squelched – do, or have any deep capacity to do.