Foreword
We are living through a period in history in which children and adolescents have been completely ignored and excluded from life and sociality. Their needs are unheard by adults, governments, those in authority, and most of those figures who call themselves knowledgeable such as doctors and educators, but, let me express, quite directly, that it was the parents themselves who allowed this to happen. A few years from now, we will look back on these events, analyzing the human behavior of this period, as was done after every war or conflict, particularly after World War II, asking ourselves after the fact, how could we as humankind have allowed this suffering not to be seen, not to hear their silent scream. This text, was born out of love for our children, rediscovering and taking responsibility for our own inner child, loving what we give life to, from the shared experience of the students at the Jan Method Systemic Representations training experiential path, asking the following question:
What are the inalienable rights of children in a holistic and physiological view of human beings and consequently, the inalienable duties to which every parent should at least attempt to aspire?
To recognize this, I asked the students to be an active part of this project, listening within themselves, as adults, to those rights that only now, after a deep journey of inner growth, they can recognize as the foundation of a harmonious, joyful and happy being.
Happy reading and I invite you to re-remember within yourself all of this and, if it resonates with you, talk about it with those close to you, discuss and dissect these issues and, if you want, go ahead and share this text with all of humanity. If we brought the focus of human existence back to the welfare of the child, surely a better world would be born. Thank you
Janine Van Der Merwe
Letter from an ordinary boy and girl
Dear Mom and Dear Dad,
my soul has chosen you, you are the perfect parents for me and my evolution, and I am the perfect son for you.
I am not here to teach you anything, I am the little one and I should relax in that.
What is expressed here, in this context, is the voice of a group of grown-ups and adults, like you, who, however, have chosen to remember, to help me give more depth and strength to my small, often unheard voice. With that voice I just want to help you mom and you dad, to remember.
My first right, if in order to conceive me you asked the doctors for help, is to know to whom my genes belong, where the egg or the seed that generated me came from; I have the right to know the history of my blood and the biology of my body. If this cannot happen, at least have the attention to process within yourself, your pain for not being able to conceive me as you would have wished, having the ability to open your heart to those donors as well, because they too are within me, through the life they have given me.
They are not yours alone, and I feel it.
Dear Mom, I understand your right to work, to a career, to your need to have a place in the world, at the same time, me growing in your womb, I have a right to feel that your heart beats with natural regularity, that it gives me the right rhythm of life, a rhythm that will then make me dance instead of run. I so need to feel that your thoughts are free from anxieties and worries because then they become hormones and come to me as nourishment, through the placenta and umbilical cord and intoxicate me. I contract in my little body, if I hear screaming or if you yourself are afraid, because I get discharges that scare me so much and if I don’t feel safe in that house, YOUR UTERUS, I will never be safe anywhere else. I also need so much to hear you talk to me and turn your attention to me often, as if you already exist, because that makes me real more and more every day.
If you are serene and rested mom during those nine months, I will most likely be the one to give the signal that I am ready to be born when my lungs are perfectly ready. Together, we have the right to choose a space where we are both born, you as mother, me as child, and that it is intimate, protected, quiet, with dim lights, where we are allowed time to tune in, to communicate with each other, to push in collaboration, without interference and judgment, because our instincts, Mom, know what to do. It is already there that I learn to conquer goals.
After all that effort I need to smell you mom, smell you, rub myself against your skin and absorb your microbiota, so my nervous system relaxes and I get to know the first microbes, but being yours, they are the friendly ones, the ones that are so good for my immune system. And as we have this mother experience together, I have every right to receive the blood of my stem cells that are in the placenta and are available to me. It is my blood and it is precious to me.
I also remind the other adults present at my birth that I am not a protocol, a number, one of many; I am also unique in my body and soul that is being embodied at that moment, and your work is sacred. I have the right to be safeguarded from invasive health treatments so that my individual and specific health framework is respected.
If it is ever my fate not to live after birth, I have the right to die and not to remain attached to the tubes of your expectations, emptiness and pain.
When we go home, if I was not born there, I ask you dad to help mom, both she and I are so tired and we need to get to know each other. We need you and for you to protect our space from too many prying eyes, the curiosity of grandparents and friends. They can wait, mom and I can’t, we are immediately entitled to our time, after that it will be too late. To feel that I exist outside the belly, I so need mom, that you look at me presently and exclusively, that love passes through your eyes, otherwise I retreat and disappear. I also believed, that you were tired and angry because of me and in order not to bother you I gave up my place as a son, I didn’t incarnate completely; it hurt so much that sadness in my lungs. And when I grow up, it will be natural for me to hide from the world.
Instead, the greats who are helping me write these words, those greats who want to remember, made me realize that it was not up to me, but that for so long they have convinced moms like you, that you are not important in the cycle of life and you are sad too that you are not seen in the world for your great role. Maybe mom we can heal together, because even if the world does not recognize your role, you are my reason for living and I need you.
I also have the right to often return to feel your heart mom, leaning against your chest, there I relax because it reminds me of home. It is not a whim, I am extremely small and helpless and when you take me to spaces where there are a lot of people, detached from you, I am afraid because their emotions enter me and it is too much for me. That’s when I extremely need to feel you as a lioness, connected to your preservation instincts, because that’s love too, recognizing my needs as an infant first, everything else takes a back seat. If you allow me to be in your swaddle, attached to you like all puppies, because that is what I am, I can feel you with all my senses, and that relaxes me: I am no longer afraid.
If it is possible mom, I prefer your milk and it tastes even better when you are happy, smiling and I see your eyes always there present to acknowledge me. If you give me milk that you are angry, tense or with thoughts elsewhere, my belly feels it, rejects it in its own way and my body will begin to believe that I don’t deserve your love and that nourishment; when I grow up I will have so many problems with food and I won’t be able to develop a sense of deserving abundance.
I have the right and it will make me grow safe, to be with you, at least for the first nine months, if you can even longer. Nine months in and nine months out with you to really get to know each other.
I have every right to cry, my tears are sacred, because only then can I express my physiological needs. If I feel that it irritates you mom, I will give up those needs and also my voice.
Don’t push me to do things ahead of time; I will start picking up objects, lifting, crawling, walking when I am ready and feel confident to do so. I have my time in this, I am unique and special: I am not your performance. And let me smile spontaneously, not to make you or the grandparents happy, otherwise I will learn that I must smile even when I am sad, in fear that you will not love me if I do not.
Even when I begin to speak, I will need my time. It will help me a lot, if when you speak to me, that you do it slowly, looking at me with presence, spelling correctly and not mispronouncing sounds, but using simple, real, concrete words relevant to the reality around me. Your words enter me and are so important to me, and if you make fun of me, ironize me or judge me, my voice freezes, I begin to hold back, convinced that I am not good enough for you. Irony is a language that I small, I am not able to understand. And if you lie to me I feel it, it is easier for me to recognize your body language than your voice. I am entitled to your consistency, to grow all attached inside, trusting my instincts and you.
I have the right to start walking freely, and your duty is to be responsible for your fears and anxieties. When I stand up on my own legs do not forget what an important goal it is for me. If I feel that you are afraid when I walk, I become stiff in my muscles, clumsy in my movements, my hips will want to go forward but will get stuck in an internal contraction. I have a low center of gravity, I don’t get hurt if I fall and even if I do, that’s how I learn. Let me have the dignity to fall and get up on my own, so I will know how to do it when I grow up in the face of life’s adversities and it will allow me to become self-reliant.
I have the right to experience this three-dimensional world of smells, lights, noises, tastes and shapes. Let me get dirty, let me get wet, let me be free to develop the sense of touch with my little hands exploring different textures. That way I also learn with my body to be part of reality, if instead, you ask me to stay still or give me a tablet or a cell phone to keep me busy and not disturb you, I will alienate myself, I will leave and then in order to feel myself in the body, I will have to hurt myself and that will be the only way I will perceive myself alive.
If all the points have failed before, it will be natural for me to be full of frustration and the only way I will have to vent all that restrained intensity will be through my anger. I have a right to my anger and don’t ask me not to feel it, to swallow it, to manage it, help me in a present way to vent it. Take me to a place where I can scream, maybe we do it together, it helps you, too, Mom and Dad, and if I start smashing objects it is because there is so much intensity in my hands; maybe you don’t know that hands are an extension of the heart and if I have so many emotions inside that I can’t express, I feel like I am going to explode. Let’s have a pillow fight together, let me punch the mattress, let’s work the earth together, it helps me so much to unload. I’m not bad, don’t tell me that, because it kills me inside; being angry doesn’t mean not being polite.
If you do not accept my anger, but rather, project your unspoken anger onto me as a child, I will convince myself that I am wrong, that I am a monster inside, and I will try to hide it in every way, and when I grow up I may hurt someone or myself.
I have the right to your trust, just as I have the right to be able to trust you and consequently the life you have given me.
I have the right to the intimacy of my body, to touch it, to experience my first approaches and to be able to know my sexuality which is not your sexuality.
If, in this family, I can experience the companionship of brothers and sisters, regardless of whether I am the eldest or the youngest, it is my right to be free to love them as brothers and sisters, not having to take on them or them me for your emptinesses; you are the elders, we are all children.
I will allow myself to experience love as a couple when I grow up because I will have experienced your love, with each other, Mom and Dad. Seeing you two as accomplices, hearing words of love and even laughing. Yes, laugh often, laugh out loud together, belly laughing, as we children do so well. Breathing in respect and communication at home will make me open to relationship, to confrontation, without fear of dying if I trust or rely on someone.
I have the right to sociality, to relate to other children like me, to be able to have experiences together: hugging, loving each other, singing, dancing, discovering the beauty of art in all its forms. I also have the right to be bored, to do nothing and just contemplate the passing cloud in the sky or the caterpillar on the leaf. It is there that I can understand the value of silence and not being afraid of emptiness.
When I go to school, remember that I am in school, with my own time, my own abilities, my own needs; you have already gone to school, don’t compare me to your story or to my classmates. I have the right to my uniqueness and my learning time, I have the right to experience a classroom whose numbers are contained, where each child is seen and welcomed with his or her specialties and difficulties.
I am already full of passion and wonder, it is natural for a child, help me to keep it within me, allowing me to study what I am passionate about, and when the day comes that I express my first spiritual or religious questions, I have the right to open myself to more versions, to hear which one belongs to me, regardless of your beliefs.
I am entitled to educators who are consistent, present, passionate, and have developed deep emotional responsibility so that they do not dump their frustrations and projections on me.
Dear Dad, I am now expressly addressing you. As I grow, explore and widen my horizon more and more, whether I am a boy or a girl, I need to feel your presence, your strength, I have the right to feel that there are boundaries, impassable limits, otherwise I feel lost. Don’t be ashamed of your strength, I need it to feel safe in the world.
I have the right to find out that there is also death, that there is evil, that there is the dark side within each of us and in the world; I can stand in front of it, to the extent that you accept this as adults.
And I can live fully who I am to the extent that, you big, you adult, accept death, and if I feel that you would be willing to die for my sake, I will know the deep meaning of the word COURAGE and I will be so proud to be your son!
You go toward the sunset, I represent the sunrise….
Let me be dawn, to each his own TIME!!!
Janine Van Der Merwe
Con il contributo degli allievi del percorso formativo esperienziale
Rappresentazioni sistemiche Metodo Jan
Nadia Fileccia – Claudia Cominato – Franco Ferracin – Claudia Di Bin – Paola Patat – Laura Cividino – Alessia Zanon – Alessia Varutti – Marica Nodale – Laura S. – Giuditta Freno –
Sara De Lorenzo – Maura M. – Emanuela Zambotto – Marco M. – Eleonora C. – Francesca M. Federica Del Col – Anna Martin – Maddalena Santin
