thing probably thought that being t

thing probably thought that being taken away from her mother was further punishment for some way in which she was deeply bad and wrong.
Children try very hard to do what their parents want. Most of us suffered a lot in childhood from believing that something must be wrong with us, or our parents wouldn't be so unhappy. The story of this child's abuse in the Sun- Times is a graphic picture of the kind of trap childhood is for most children, even those who are not physically abused— even those whose parents believe they are being kind. The suffering of children abused by moralism, which is so com- mon as to hardly be noticed, is based on the same desperate trying and wanting to please parents—to survive and be good enough to keep, and be worthy of their love—displayed by the little girl in the photograph.
Moralism is a disease in which "good" and "bad" be- come more important than "alive" or "dead." The heart of the disease is hurt and anger and fear of losing love and hys- terical hope that we can somehow figure out how to be good enough to keep hurts from happening again.
In this quest, control is one of the first things children learn that they need to learn. That was just one of those things we found out when we grew up: we needed to get control of ourselves. But the imposition of control is often the source of anger. The imposition of control on anger is the source of even greater anger. Displacement of anger in the form of judgments and internal moral resolves results in the child learning to hate everybody else and eventually himself as well. The growing child learns this as a way to survive.
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