Teaching Hate is Child Abuse
How Children Learn to Hate
Long before learning their ABCs, 1+1=2, and “Share your toys,” children learn how to be a human from the people around them. If we're not careful — or worse, if it's intentional — children also learn to hate. So let's call teaching hate what it is: child abuse.
A couple of months ago, I was writing a lot about how children learn — how we all learned as children to be in the world. (See my blog posts How We Learn and Families: The Training Ground for Small Humans.)
We learn from our parents or our primary caregivers. We watch them closely, looking at their behaviors and words to figure out how to behave and what is right or correct.
We learn things like what foods are "normal," how people interact, and what is safe or not safe to do.
We absorb all these things primarily by watching, and then over time, we are told things explicitly. We also learn implicitly by watching others around us. It’s a complex, layered process of learning, happening mainly in the first couple of years of life.
Some kids are fortunate to see and experience love and caring and learn really positive things, while others see and experience horrendous things and learn hardness and fear. Either way, it shapes their worldview.
It’s Unfair When Kids Have No Control
Whether good or bad, these experiences imprint on kids how to be in the world, and they don’t have control over it.
First of all, they don't have control over their environment and can’t choose what they see or experience.
They also don't have control over how to think about things because they don't have rational thinking ability yet.
They can't say, "Wait, I saw one thing and that disproves this other thing I saw."
That kind of thinking isn't developed in the brain yet until they are teens. (And then it’s still pretty rudimentary!)
Children also are also at a huge disadvantage to making comparisons because they are unable to read nuance. While they are very watchful and see nuance, they don’t know how to interpret it.
So it’s important to understand that biologically and developmentally, children simply can’t process things the way adults do.
And even if they could make these discernments between what they are told and what they observe themselves, children are entirely dependent on others for care and are hard-wired to do whatever it takes to fit in, to not be ostracized, to belong.
Teaching Hate: The Unseen Child Abuse
Many forms of child abuse are obvious and unquestioned: Sexual assault, physical violence, emotional abuse where children are told they are stupid, bad, or worthless.
Each of these violates the physical space, holistic development, and innocence of children.
But there is another realm that is violated and rarely talked about: the pure hearts of children.
Children come into the world pure. I've seen hundreds of babies come into the world, and there isn't a lick of hatred in their bodies. They may not like being cold, being outside the womb, or being poked and prodded, but they don’t hate anything.
Babies react to discomfort purely from survival instincts, not from judgment or hate.
Their nervous system tells them if something hurts and they cry in response.
If they're feeling cold, their hard wiring says, "Being cold is not good for survival,” so...cry.
When they need energy, their belly cramps and they want to eat.
Their crying make it look like they’re pissed off and angry, but there's no judgment involved.
It’s all just survival wiring.
But when they learn that broccoli is yucky and they haven't even tasted broccoli, they are being conditioned — brainwashed — by somebody around them.
The Difference Between Broccoli and Spiders
As they grow, children learn many behaviors and ideas. Learning to dislike broccoli is unfortunate, but not harmful. However, when they are taught to dislike or hate other people, animals, or even insects, it becomes deeply problematic.
Most people don’t hate spiders or bees because of personal experience; fear of insects is often passed down as a behavior or belief. But if everyone goes around killing every insect they see in ignorance (versus personal experience or knowledge), these critters who are essential to our planet’s survival get annihilated. Not good!
But let’s get back to my focus on hating people.
When kids are taught to dislike, judge, or hate other people, cultures, countries, or religions, they have no defense against such horrid thinking.
Any type of hatred or judgment against others — but especially racism because it’s so easy to target someone visually this way — is child abuse because it gets planted in the brain of a vulnerable child.
They aren’t equipped to question what they are being told.
They learn a type of thinking, it becomes part of their thought and behavior patterns, and they go out into the world and replicate that ideology and attitude.
Hatred gets normalized and we see it all around us.
The Difference Between Spiders and Mexico
Many people think it is perfectly fine to dislike people from another country. What??? Why would I hate someone who is otherwise just like me except for the continent they were born on (which, by the way, they had absolutely no choice in)? Should they grow up to hate their country because it’s not my country? Or should they grow up to hate me because of my great misfortune to be born in a country other than theirs?
Try this exercise to see how hate works in our hearts:
Take a few deep breaths and imagine this scenario: Someone see you. Your skin color is different from them. You speak a different language from them. You eat something different for breakfast than they do. And they hate you for it.
Imagine what that hatred must feel like in their heart. Put yourself in their body for a moment but feel their feelings in your body.
How does their hatred feel in your heart when imagining it? Yucky, huh? Tight, painful, hard.
Now, feel in your body what it feels like to be hated (don’t think about it or how you’d respond to them, just FEEL what it’s like to be hated). Can you feel what their judgment does to your body? Do you feel safe? Is your brain affected? How is your heart?
Nobody wins when hate is involved. Not the hater or the hated.
Yet most people are taught that nationalism is just fine.
Kids Say the Darndest Things
Children repeat what they hear. It's how they learn to talk and — remember they have no filters —while this can sometimes be entertaining, it also shows how they can perpetuate harmful ideas without understanding them.
You know that expression, "Kids say the darndest things?"
Well, they do. They repeat what they hear, often out of context or with a mispronounced word that makes it adorable.
Sometimes what they’re repeating is not appropriate for their age but they don’t know that.
And sometimes, what they’re repeating should have never been said in the first place.
I was parking at the local Costco a few months ago and saw a truck parked near the front of the store. Across the back of the truck was a banner that said “Fuck Biden.”
I imagined the freshly-minted 6-year-old reader sounding it out proudly for grandma.
Or the confusion it instilled in an 8-year-old who heard enough news to wonder what on earth the President had done to cause such hatred.
Maybe a kid saw the driver of the truck and they looked just like their favorite uncle. “Hmmm, yeah, maybe I should think like him, too,” without having any more understanding of the statement.
But mostly I wondered who the fuck thought it was okay to put that on their truck and drive around in public with it, innocent children be damned? Child abuse.
(And in case you're wondering: If I saw a truck that said 'Fuck Trump" I'd think the same thing.)
Why Even Teens Lack Discernment
It’s true that much of human survival is based on detecting differences. It’s how our brain categorizes things to decide if they are safe, dangerous, or unknown based on past experience.
Our bodies are hard-wired to notice differences and pay attention to them.
But hating differences is something our minds conjured up.
Children have the ability to see inconsistencies, but they will often keep it to themselves. Or the spunky kid will say, "Hey wait, I saw one person that looks like someone you told me to hate, and they were really nice, but you told me they're all mean.”
When kids get to the age where they can safely individuate from their parents, they still choose not to honor anything that goes against the values they’ve been taught. If they are well-conditioned and fearful, they are unlikely to say, "Wait a second, I'm seeing some flaws in your teaching."
Even teenagers are afraid to stand out or confront a parent because their survival is still heavily dependent on that parent and the desire to belong. Peer pressure at its worst.
Breaking the Cycle
Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can personally do to change all the hatred in the world. But I do know that if each individual becomes aware of this kind of abuse, and each family vows to end hate violence, it can be stopped.
If you work with families and children, consider how you can raise adults’ awareness of what they’re saying about others. Remind them that their children take their words as facts, and poisoning their minds with hatred is unfair and child abuse.
Of course, we first need to get hatred out of our hearts, language, and minds. We all have it because we’ve all learned it in our culture of othering. It will take some intentional practice to instead accept and be kind to people who are different from us (which is everyone).
Be Mindful of Your Words
Don Miguel Ruiz, a Toltec teacher, said, "Be impeccable with your word" in his book The Four Agreements. That means to carefully curate what you speak to not cause harm to yourself or others. I attempt to do it everyday. I fail at it everyday. But my failed version is better than if I didn’t try at all.
We can all be more mindful of the things we say about others. And we can make sure our kids understand, as early as possible, that people say things that aren’t necessarily true.
When it comes to people having different opinions from yours, it’s inevitable. My stance is that, as long as no one is being harmed by someone’s opinion (i.e. they don’t force it on others or instill it in defenseless children), they are entitled to it. However, when someone wants their ideas or opinions to be institutionalized — made the only legal or available option — or used to make people feel unsafe or less valued than others, then it becomes harmful.
Then they are peddling oppression, which is cruel and dismissive of other people’s dignity and rights. Basically, hate.
The Importance of Teaching Truth
We see the spread of hate so much in the world today with grown people spewing verbal attacks on people they don’t agree with, or book bans that prevent kids from learning all the history so they can see how hate played out in the past.
What kind of example does this set for children to learn about other people’s ways of being instead of attacking them for it?
Why would anyone try to prevent learning about history when we know that if we don’t understand our history, we’re doomed to repeat it?
Attacks and bans come from the same place: fear and moral weakness masquerading as power.
So does propagating hate.
If we poison children’s bodies with toxins, that is child abuse.
If we're poisoning their minds with hate, that is child abuse as well.
So let's do better. I hope you join me in that.
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