Left In The Corner: Forgotten Children

Forgotten children. The child who was not loved by his parents. The kid who grew up in the corner. He will be stuck there for decades, even when he grows up, because his childhood was stolen and love was denied him. He is still connected to the hungry and angry child he once was. He remains stuck in his trauma.

The book Parenting from the Inside Out , by psychiatrist and professor Daniel J. Siegel, gives us the perfect term to describe this forgotten child: shame culture. Behind this word is a hidden reality that we are not often aware of.

We are talking about the little children who are ashamed and confused because they do not live in a typical family. They receive no recognition, compassion, care or safety.

Forgotten children have no role in the house. They are children who ask but never receive, children who have learned that crying is useless. Children who have never been able to see themselves in the eyes of their parents or feel their embrace. Forgotten children who never had an authentic home or hug that could reassure them that everything would be okay.

These children of the culture of shame lose themselves in the abyss of uprooting, anger and silence. A discouraging scenario that, believe it or not, is very common in our society.

Forgotten children, a neglected life

When we think of the forgotten child, we often think of dysfunctional families. These are environments in which physical and verbal abuse, immature parents, and psychological trauma are common. Where the child is marginalized. An environment characterized by emotional imbalance, uncertainty and fear.

Now it is important to make something clear: the forgotten child lives closer to us than we think. It could even be our neighbor. Maybe he lives in an elegant three-story house, or he has parents who always seem friendly and cheerful. Or maybe you see these parents holding their quiet child, who hides sadness in his eyes as they take him to school or after-school activities.

Maybe he has his own key, and you always see him coming into his house alone and abandoned because his parents work every day, as they should. They come home tired with no energy to talk to or listen to him. That is something that should never happen. There is no violence in this situation, but the dysfunction is obvious. This too is a form of abuse: the lack of real love, the lack of a aware and present parent, the lack of feeling for the child.

No one should live in a corner

No one should live in a dark room without affection. Spending childhood in such an environment, full of shadows and without affection, will lead to an internal conflict in the child that can last for decades. Interestingly, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote in her book On Grief and Grieving that  children with traumatic childhoods have to go through a very special kind of grief.

The American-Swiss psychiatrist explains that it’s like starting an operation on a series of disorganized emotions hidden in boxes. The deeper you go, the messier the box gets. It is a chaotic internal world where everything exists at once: anger, anger, deception, neglect and depression.

The forgotten child often turns into an inaccessible adult, people who isolate themselves and cannot form lasting and meaningful relationships. That’s because, in a sense, they still live in this culture of shame, where they constantly wonder what they did wrong to not deserve love. They have never been given the love it takes to build and grow as humans.

Nobody deserves to live in a corner, especially children. Our little ones deserve to be addressed with caring words. They deserve our time even though we’ve had a long day. Moreover, they deserve our everlasting patience and comfort.

I would like to conclude with a proposal: invest in a conscious upbringing. Let’s avoid creating more forgotten children, more lost childhoods. Think about the consequences your actions will have for the rest of your child’s life.