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The adult has three major reactions: projective reaction, reversal reaction, or empathic reaction.
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The child in the past was so charged with projections that he was often in danger of being considered a changeling if he cried too much or was otherwise too demanding. -
Once parents began to accept the child as having a soul, the only way they could escape the dangers of their own projections was by abandonment.
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Children were given to the wet nurse, to the monastery or nunnery, to foster families, to the homes of other nobles as servants or hostages, or were emotionally abandoned at home. -
The children were a container for dangerous projections, it was their parent's task to mold it into shape.
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Restraints were thought necessary because the child was so full of dangerous adult projections that if it were left free it would scratch its eyes out, tear its ears off, be terrified by the sight of its own limbs, and even crawl about on all fours like an animal. -
Children were considered less threatening that true empathy was possible, and pediatrics was born, which along with the general improvement in level of care by parents reduced infant mortality and provided the basis for the demographic transition of the eighteenth century.
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The children were no longer full of dangerous projections, and rather than just examine its insides with an enema, the parents approached even closer and attempted to conquer its mind, in order to control its insides.
The children were nursed by the mother, not swaddled, toilet trained early, prayed with but not played with, hit but not regularly whipped, punished for masturbation, and made to obey promptly with threats and guilt as often as with other methods of punishment. -
As projections continued to diminish, the raising of a child became less a process of conquering its will than of training it, guiding it into proper paths, teaching it to conform, socializing it.
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The father for the first time begins to take more than an occasional interest in the child. -
The child knows better than the parent what it needs at each stage of its life, and fully involves both parents in the child’s life as they work to empathize with and fulfill its expanding and particular needs.
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Children are neither struck nor scolded, and are apologized to if yelled at under stress. It involves an enormous amount of time, energy, and discussion on the part of both parents, especially in the first six years.
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