The book is coming along very well - page and word count is below.

We have assembled and organized all the sections - I am starting a readthrough this weekend to blunt some of the sharper edges, and to make sure it flows well.

Please have a look at the Table of Contents below (there are a few sections at the bottom that still need a home) and let me know what you think! (The numbers to the right are page numbers of course.)

If you would like to help support the book, please visit https://www.freedomain.com/donate - thank you so much!

Contents

Prologue            6

Introduction       16

PART 1: THEORY            

Peaceful Parenting: What Is It?   32

What The World Should Be         35

The Evolution of Abuse  59

Entitlement        66

But My Childhood…        78

Humanity Versus Power 81

The Rules of Peaceful Parenting  90

The Ethics of Peaceful Parenting 97

   What If My Children Lie to Me?  100

   Credibility Is the Opposite of Vanity         106

PART 2: PRACTICE          

Parenting and General Integrity  108

Parenting and Moral Instruction 113

Peaceful Parenting and Ego         115

Peaceful Parenting and the Voluntary Family       121

   Preferences and Identity              127

   Benefits of Having Children         133

Discipline without Violence         135

   Imposing Standards        143

Peaceful Parenting and Sleep      146

   Start Early          146

   Self Soothing     146

   Simple Sleep Steps          147

   Does sleep training require ‘cry it out’?   147

Peaceful Parenting and Timeouts             148

What is a timeout?         149

Sibling Aggression           153

Compliance and the Teenage Years          159

Peaceful Parenting: Clean Your Room!     163

   Why Is It Important?       164

   Have I Modelled the Behaviour I Want in My Children?            169

Peaceful Parenting and Peer Pressure      171

Family and Bullying        175

Siblings 179

   Brothers             180

   Sisters   180

   Sibling Potential               183

Extended Family and Peaceful Parenting 186

   Extended Family             189

   Dealing with Family Bullies          190

   Family Loyalties 192

   Blowback from Boundaries          195

How to Apologize           196

   Apologizing to Children  204

   Restitution         213

Child Abuse and Power  217

Peaceful Parenting and Reconciliation     224

Defining the Cycle of Abuse         234

Breaking the Cycle of Abuse        246

The Effects of Child Abuse over the Lifespan         248

Neglect 250

   The Effects of Neglect    251

   Sadism and Neglect        257

Empathy             260

Strength             268

Moral Clarity      270

PART 3: EFFECTS

Does Society Love its Children?   271

   Empirical Priorities          271

   The Dangers of Smoking vs the Dangers of Child Abuse        273

   Spending on Child Abuse Awareness       274

   National Debts, Unfunded Liabilities and Children             278

   Spanking versus Covid    281

   Government Schools and Child Abuse     281

Adverse Childhood Experiences  315

   Prevalence of ACEs         315

   ACEs and Health             317

Global Prevalence of Child Abuse             317

   How often are children under the age of 2 hit?              318

Root Causes of Adult Dysfunction            318

The Detrimental Effects of Physical Abuse            318

Physical Punishment as a Predictor of Early Cognitive Development  319

   Physical Abuse and Stress Responses       322

   Spanking and IQ              323

   School Corporal Punishment and Its Associations with Achievement and Adjustment  323

   Physical Punishment as a Predictor of Early Cognitive Development  324

   Spanking: Conclusions [add more]           324

Mother's Weight and its Link to Diabetes             324

Early Parent Child Bond and Stress: (Return to Chapter)             325

We Cannot Survive Without Touch: (The Effects of Neglect)             327

   The Experiment on Language Isolation    327

Parts of the Brain Associated with Empathy (Return to chapter)             328

The Environmental Impact of Divorce:     329

   Overall Carbon Footprint of Divorce        331

   The Financial Impact of Divorce  331

The Bomb in the Brain   333

Adverse Childhood Experiences  334

   The Silent Scars: Verbal Abuse and Its Consequences    335

   The Soul Denied and Rejected: The Insidious Trauma of Neglect          338

   The Gravest Evil: Confronting Child Sexual Abuse and Its Impact      342

      The Unspoken Truth       342

      Understanding the Prevalence    342

   The Grave Ramifications              346

   Longer-Term Impacts of Childhood Sexual Abuse   347

Child Abuse and Early Onset Menstruation           347

Brain Alterations: How Child Abuse Reshapes Neural Pathways            348

The Effects of Child Abuse on One's Genes           354

Obesity and Health: The Physical Consequences of Emotional Wounds         357

Childhood Trauma and Biological Disruption        363

Key Components and Processes: 365

   The LHPA Axis and Childhood Trauma: Key Points   366

   Meta-analyses indicate: 366

   Childhood Trauma and Biological Stress Systems              367

   Influence of Trauma Timing and Duration              368

   Childhood trauma responses link to diverse biological stress regulation          368

   Biological stress system responses to childhood trauma are impacted by genetic components       369

   Epigenetic elements influence the biological stress system reactions to childhood trauma              370

   Gender differences impact how childhood trauma affects biological stress systems  371

   Heart Disease and Cancer            373

Sleep Disruptions: The Overlooked Consequence of Child Abuse        375

Risky Business: Promiscuity and Drug Abuse        377

   Promiscuity        377

   Drug Abuse (Including Alcohol)   379

The Incline towards Risky Behaviors and Criminality              382

   ACEs and Suicide:            382

   ACEs and Criminality      383

Beneath the Surface: Children Navigating the Waters of Parental Divorce         385

   The Disruption of Stability           386

   Loss of Trust       386

   Divorce: Educational and Social Impacts  387

   The Psychological Toll     387

Overall Negative Outcomes: The Life Cut Short    387

Bomb in the Brain: Conclusion    389

From Shadows to Sunlight: Dialogues that Mend the Soul       389

   The Ghosts of Childhood             389

   Talk Therapy: A Beacon in the Dark          390

How Peaceful Parenting Protects Children            393

Predators: How They Operate     394

   Basic Information on Offenders  394

   Selection of Victims        394

   Recruitment of Victims (Outside of Immediate Families)            395

   Location of Abuse           396

   Strategies Used 396

   First Move Made             397

      During First Sexual Contact          397

     Maintenance of Victims 397

     Offenders Preparation for The Abuse Immediately Prior to Offending  397

     Offenders Feelings and Concerns About the Abuse From The Offender's POV       398

     Offender's Own History  398

     Reliability Assessment    398

   11 Major Grooming Categories (from MOQ)              399

The Importance of Sleep             402

Parental Excuses            408

   General Principles for Excuses     408

  “It Wasn’t That Bad”      410

   “If I could go back, I would do it better, but I can't, so let's just move forward.”            411

   “I brought you into this world and I can take you out!”           412

   “How was I supposed to know…”             412

   “Wait till college to date?……You knew I was joking.” 413

   “You don’t listen anyway….”        413

   “As long as you live under my roof, I make the rules!”   414

   “Do as I Say, Not as I Do!”            415

   “You had a better childhood than I did.”  415

   “It hurts me more than it hurts you!”      416

   Christians and Proverbs 13:24    417

   “Other kids have it a lot worse than you…”              418

   “You don't know how difficult it is... You'll understand when you become a parent!”              418

   "You and your siblings fought all the time!"              418

   "You all drove us crazy!" 418

   "We didn't know what else to do!"          418

   “That’s how I was raised!”           419

   “The Bible instructs parents to spank their kids, this is for your own good” my parents would say.          420

   "Well so-and-so was disciplined and turned out just fine!"    420

   “If we didn't beat you, you would have done ‘xyz’ immoral or illegal thing!”    421

   “This person turned out badly because he was not spanked enough as a child!” 422

   “It’s hard to be a peaceful parent when they’re not being peaceful kids!”             423

   “I was spanked  - and I turned out fine!” 425

   “Kids need to learn to respect and obey their parents!”            426

   "I didn't want to only be a parent. I wanted to have a career too!"         427

   "I'm not a perfect parent, but (s)he's not a perfect kid either!"         429

   "Kids are resilient. They'll survive."          430

   "I didn't know you were unhappy!"          431

   "I always tried to listen to you kids!"        432

   "I've become a better person since then!"              434

   "I'll always be your mother, I deserve forgiveness!"      435

   "The parenting books/therapist at the time said to let you work it out on your own!"              435

   “I guess I didn’t do anything right!”         436

   My mother used to say: "One day you'll thank me for this" after beating me when I was a child.     437

Bibliography      440

Needs a Home:  446

Free play and executive function.             446

Twin Differences in Harsh Parenting Predict Youth’s Antisocial Behavior          446

The enduring effect of maltreatment on antisocial behavior          447

“Thirty-nine infants with rib fractures were identified. Thirty-two (82%) were caused by child abuse. “     447

Childhood Illnesses

My mother used to have hippies come visit – I remember their names, and the general timber of their conversations, but it is impossible to replicate their words in any specific detail, so much time has passed. The early parts of my life, as I re-create them here, seem less of a documentary, and more of a “based on a true story” narrative – I suppose that is inevitable, given the number of years that have passed, my lack of desire or ability to consult with those who were there – or to trust what they would say, and the nature of memory itself, which is a narrative designed to protect us in the future, rather than objectively identify the past.

These hippies had the typical Jim-Morrison-Jesus-beard look going, and seemed vaguely indifferent to personal hygiene, and ate enormously, and scratched endlessly, and listened raptly, barely blinking, while barely seeming to take in any words at all.

They sat around our dining room table, devouring loaves of sour, black German bread, fingering their ears, gesturing with shiny fingertips, each attempting to climb on the mad platonic language of the others, to create a near-infinite tower of Babel of polysyllabic meaninglessness.

Their conversations – for want of a better word – generally centred around the dismantling of sense-evidence in the unraveling of any kind of objective metaphysics. Everyone had a story about a friend who had foreseen some terrible event – thus dismantling the objectivity of time. Other stories involved secondhand reports of psychic experiences – thus dismantling the objectivity of science and language. (Also evolution – any tribe which somehow developed the capacity to silently transfer thoughts would have dominated the planet, since they would be so much better at hunting and war.)

Other times, they would discuss the inevitable “higher realities” – the word had to be plural, because one higher reality would not be nearly enough for their fevered imaginations.

They were highly verbally adept, but utterly undisciplined intellectually. Their words were compelling – I sat sometimes on my mother’s lap, sometimes on a chair, and sometimes on the floor, watching their legs jiggling under the table, as if they were slowly pumping up the helium nonsense of their language – but nothing they described had any kind of centre.

This was quite common in the 70s – it didn’t just happen in my home. UFOs, pyramids, psychic phenomena, radical environmentalism, Marxism, socialism, leftism of every kind, feminism – all sorts of randomized ideas floated through the social ether. It’s sort of felt like the giant brains of Western civilization had cut loose their moorings, and now floated like hot air balloons in a landscape without gravity, in both senses of the word.

As an adult, when I worked a human resources, I went to a conference, and gave a speech, with no real knowledge about what I was talking about. I just spewed up some platitudes and arguments and data, and got warm applause and positive feedback, which left me with little respect for the discipline of human resources. I couldn’t imagine doing that at a physics conference, for instance.

What were the standards of truth in these wild and woolly conversations? What did it mean to be accurate, or in error? No one ever really disagreed with anyone else – but no one ever really agreed with the specifics of what was said, but only the generalities, the general methodology. If I had been older, and wiser in the ways of philosophy, I would have argued back against the crazed assertions and undisciplined chains of pseudo-logic – and then, as one, they would have united against me, having finally found someone they could call wrong and blind and prejudiced and narrowminded. Any mad statement could be made with impunity, but any demand for reason and evidence was met with outright contempt and hostility...

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All about me, for those who have an interest to know, is summed up in the fact that I grew up facing down a near-infinite dragon of madness.

To be surrounded by madness is to never be at peace, but to never be at open war either. It is a constant battle of wills, which rarely flares into open combat and hatred.

To be raised by madness is to be like being clay and attempting - by reason alone - to resist the mad manipulations of an insane potter. Madness strives to drive rationality out of the human soul as a priest drives a demon from a shaking body.

Madness is a form of vanity, a hysteria of self-regard, which places the survival of the moment far above the sanity of the future.

Madness is a pathology of avoidance of criticism – which doubtless stems from an excess of self-hatred. Madness is a form of interpersonal domination, and can never leave those around it well enough alone. Madness fails and falters in the face of mere empirical sensual reality – it can only survive by reproducing in the minds of others. If it is a fish, the world is air, and its children are water.

Madness repels, and thus must breed, so it does not end up alone. Madness is so repulsive that it must propagandize, otherwise the voluntarism of recoiling relationships might heal its endless deviations.

My family’s madness was most centered around my mother, and my mother’s madness is difficult of course for me to diagnose, as it must be for anyone, because it is a kind of quicksilver that resists and avoids any fencing in through language, or even basic cause-and-effect.

My mother was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1937, and it’s hard to imagine a worse time in history to draw your first breath. Totalitarianism, insistent propaganda and warmongering, shortages and hysteria and the gathering fists of war, all closing around the population. Hitler did not ban Germans from leaving Germany, unlike many communist countries, and I suppose my grandparents decided to cross their fingers and wait it out.

It was a bad idea.

The first thousand-plane raid of the second world war occurred over Dresden in 1944, and took the life of my grandmother, who had an important job of some kind, and stayed in the city for work purposes, while her husband and my mother fled.

According to my mother, when they returned the next day, their house was completely destroyed, and the only thing they found of my grandmother’s was the clasp of her purse – she had been completely vaporized, it seems.

I had few stories of the war from my mother – madness hides its origins, just as a squirrel hides nuts in the winter, to sustain itself. One I remember was that she had to flirt with and cuddle up to a Soviet tank commander, for fear that he would destroy the village she was in. This would be when she was seven or eight years old, which shows a remarkable resourcefulness, and even courage – at the expense of any kind of sane progression of childhood maturation.

My mother left Germany as soon as she could, and worked as a courier on airplanes, delivering packages around the world – on one such trip, she met my father. She enjoyed his wit and intelligence, he enjoyed her conversational skills and diaphanous female beauty, and they merged together like hugging ghosts...

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