Further problems will be discussed under the headings of the basic emotions.

Grief

Grief as we know it in adults does not exist in infants under the age of about six months. They do not react to loss with a soft, sobbing contraction of the body. Instead, after an initial period of protest, they become immobile, dazed, with blank searching eyes. The same expression can be seen in mother-deprived monkeys. At these early ages, loss of mother equals loss of the emotions, and the infant will grow up emotionally empty.

Grief as such begins to be seen when a child is aware of loss. If it is the loss of mother, for a child in the first years of life, the cycle that John Bowlby (Attachment and Loss) has identified as protest—despair—detachment, will occur. The specific grief reaction is seen in relation to loss that is emotionally overwhelming but not annihilating. An example would be the breaking of a favorite toy, or the death of a much loved pet. A child crying after this kind of loss seems to experience it with infinite poignancy, as if the whole world has been taken away. But the child does recover emotionally, and what is very important, he or she retains the capacity to feel grief and express it. The loss has not erased the emotion itself. I would propose that the reason for this capacity to integrate the experience of loss is that the child still has its mother. Mother is not lost. The child still has a secure reference point and source of support and contact. There is an important lesson here for adult EFA: a person will retain the capacity to discharge tension through the emotion of grief, provided he or she feels basically secure. For an adult, a secure sense-of the self has replaced the need for mother. This security may be shaken by grief, and EFA can provide a temporary support. But the EFA works because the person has an inner security to return to. It is notable that people who have little or no sense of security, or who feel emotionally deprived, very often cannot cry. It would be too dangerous.

When a child cries from loss, the instinctive reaction of a warm-hearted parent is to gather the child into his or her arms. Often the child is lifted to the adult's shoulder, and the adult lays one hand on the back of the neck and comforts the child with a rocking motion—instinctive EFA. It is a mistake for an adult to try to cheer up a child. The child will sense if this is in fact to relieve the adult's own anxiety. A child's emotional expression can be frustrated directly by commands or threats to stop, or indirectly by the nonverbal message that the emotion makes the parent uncomfortable. All the emotional distress that EFA with adults aims to help has its origin not in childhood emotions as such—children are resilient enough to survive many emotional traumas—but in the frustration of the emotional expression itself.

The classic threat that crushes grief in a child is: 'Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about' What child, or even adult, could survive this double message? But it is heard frequently. It also reappears years later when the adult is in therapy trying to find out what has caused feelings of deadness. As one person in therapy, incapable of crying, said to me: 'When I was a kid I would be spanked, then I would cry, then I would be spanked again for crying.' In such cases, the block is visible in the clenched jaw, tight neck and shoulders, and the hard chest over a hardened heart.

Anger

The frustration of frustration. This is the key to the blocking of anger in children. A child's anger is intense, even frightening, to those who pay attention to it. It is just as powerful as the anger of an adult—understandably, since both are emotions that fill the whole organism. As usual there is no essential difference between the emotions of child and adult. But when an adult becomes fully angry, onlookers are likely to retreat. When a child becomes angry, the same onlookers may laugh or brutally scold the child. A whole social superstructure of authority and obedience reinforces this. A cynic might say that this is because the violence of a child is less threatening than that of an adult. The child can be crushed without danger. But in fact, adult violence is not simply an extension of anger, it is a result of blocked anger. The origins of this block can be seen in examples from childhood. Typically, a boy will be brutally beaten back when he tries to express anger toward a parent. In frustration he rushes to hit another child, or to find a dangerous weapon, or to destroy some precious object. In later life he may turn up in therapy as the sort of dangerous bar fighter who goes blind with rage when insulted by someone he perceives as stronger, and rushes for the nearest broken bottle or knife. Sober, he is afraid of his own anger. He has both been punished for it, as a child, and seen the results of his own violence, which he mistakenly identifies as anger. Violence is impotent, but anger can be potent if allowed its voice. Children and their emotions are seldom allowed to show any potency. After all, if a child's anger were taken seriously, adults might be influenced by it to modify their behavior, and for the average, insecure adult this would be humiliating.

So it still occurs that boys in particular grow up with the heavy muscle-bound shoulders that contain anger, and the furtive eyes that are afraid to look directly in case their inner wish for violent revenge can be seen. In girls and women, the suppressed anger tends to emerge in the form of arrogance, cutting remarks, and masochistic maneuvers. This is not biological. Men and women, adults and children, are equally capable of anger. But once a primary emotion is suppressed, the various secondary reactions that remain (in the case of anger these are resentment, guilt, hatred, remorse, etc.) are channeled by cultural expectations. The men are expected to be potentially violent, the women potentially malicious.

Though a child's anger is disturbing in its intensity, the best gift you can offer is acceptance. Of course, when the chips are down, the child is impotent compared to the adult, but leaving brute force aside, an adult who feels genuinely big inside should be capable of giving in to a child's anger if it makes sense, and of at least respecting it when it does not.

The methods of EFA for anger with adults can be used cautiously with children, with the exception of those that imply showdowns. In particular, it may be useful to help the child be aware of the legitimacy of his or her anger by encouraging the child to look directly at the adult. 'Let me see how angry you are' is a fair request to a child. And to make the emotional conflict more equal, it helps if the adult crouches or sits down at the child's level so that they are eye to eye.

Some parents encourage their children to take out their anger on a specific toy or doll as a scapegoat, in the interest of avoiding general destruction. This is well meaning, and accepting of the child's anger, but it is also controlling and does nothing to relieve the child's sense of impotence. The child knows perfectly well that kicking the doll is an artificial substitute. And kicking or beating a doll is an unfortunate prototype for adult violence. I would suggest a two-step approach to destructive anger in a child:

—First, encourage a direct statement from the child to the person who is responsible for the child's resentment (let us say the parent who has forbidden a treat). Encourage, but don't bully, the child to look the parent eye to eye on the same level, to show the anger.

—Second, propose some kind of vigorous activity to mobilize whatever anger remains. 'Let's go and kick a ball around, and let off steam' is a fair idea. Sharing the activity with the child respects the emotion. And a ball is more appropriate for kicking than a scapegoat doll.

Many parents may say such a proposal is naive. The realities of interaction with a three-year-old are more complex than anything this book can express in a few examples. True, but simple principles are still valid, such as 'Don't intimidate, don't manipulate, don't bully.' And they all reduce to one basic principle: respect the child's emotions as much as you would your own.

Children are certainly maddening. Part of the problem of children's anger is the anger it arouses in adults. Is it right to show your anger fully to a child? The fact that many adults recall their parent's rage with vivid terror indicates a need for caution. An adult's blazingly angry eyes can threaten to destroy a child.

If you respect a child's emotions, you have the right to demand that the child respects your own emotions. It is honest to express your anger. But a rule to follow might be to respect the proportions of the situation and not to show your anger to a child more intensely than you think the child is capable of showing its anger to you. Of course, show anger with your eyes, but don't kill with your eyes. Enough children have been emotionally killed in this way already.

Finally, the old question: is it right to hit a child? This is relevant to EFA and to anger, because your expressions of anger toward the child determine the range of the child's own future expressions. The simple answer to this question is: 'No.' Hitting converts anger into violence. But many of us who have children would say it is not quite so simple. We may have hit our children, especially when the child has given us a fright through some dangerous action. And it can be emphasized that to strike a child in anger is not the same as to beat a child deliberately as part of a technique of punishment. Corporal punishment is always violence, whether private or institutionalized.

I would propose that it is basically wrong to strike a child in anger because it is violent and because there is a danger that the adult's superior size is being used to intimidate the child. Intimidation is the foundation for later fear, impotence in anger, and chronic violence. But on occasion, it does seem fair to strike our children. The example that comes to mind is retaliation when our children strike us. If your daughter kicks you on the shin and it hurts, is it really wrong to hit her back? If she has given you a fright by running in front of a bus, is it really wrong to smack her once to reinforce your angry statement of concern? These questions must be for parents to decide, perhaps after discussions with the children themselves. It is possible, though, to establish a simple guideline for the physical expression of anger to a child: never strike a child with any more force than the child would be capable of exerting. That is, if you hit an eight-year-old child, be sure that you are hitting no harder than an eight-year-old would. The result may not be a blow but a forceful tap. It will, however, express your anger. It will also show the child that anger can be expressed in a focused and controlled way. You mitigate your anger in choosing to express it on the child's own level. The tap is not violence, but a forceful expression of anger.

My own view is that, if adults respected the anger of children and responded honestly while taking care to keep their response at the children's own level, this would be a step toward the rehabilitation of anger as a legitimate and nonviolent human emotion. But I have to state this personally rather than as an authority or a therapist. The whole question is delicate.