Christmas comes but once a year but it never comes alone. Fear, pain and suffering often tag along.
We do need to spare a thought for those less better off than ourselves. The poor, the abused and the homeless, the stateless refugee.
Sadly there have been three terrible child abuse cases lately in the UK. Children abused and killed by parents and now two sets of twins aged 3 and 4 years burned to death in a house where they were home alone. These are the cases that have made the news there are many many more we will never know of.
Okay we can’t change the world over night but we must spare a thought for everyone we can help with our time, gifts or money.
There are many more charities you can choose from.
I truly hope you have a wonderful Christmas filled with joy, health and peace especially in these covid times.
I LOVE YOU ALL
willowdot21 
Dec 18, 2021 @ 16:11:45
Thanks for including River – I love Joni Mitchell
Wishing you a wonderful Christmas!
Dec 18, 2021 @ 16:52:14
Thank you Dan Joni Mitchell is a favourite of mine too, and that song is so lonely isn’t it. I also wish you and your a wonderful Christmas 🎄⛄💜
Dec 18, 2021 @ 16:59:36
💜🥰💜🥰💜
Dec 18, 2021 @ 17:58:52
💜💜💜
Dec 18, 2021 @ 17:19:57
Amen to that Willow.
Dec 18, 2021 @ 17:58:34
Thank you Di 💜
Dec 18, 2021 @ 18:49:13
Happy Christmas, Willow
Dec 18, 2021 @ 21:24:12
And you and all your family too John 💜
Dec 18, 2021 @ 21:26:46
😁
Dec 24, 2021 @ 01:20:51
I say, the best Christmas present a child can receive is a healthy, properly functioning brain thus mind, hopefully for life. … Too many people will procreate regardless of their competence level in raising children in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. Being free nations, society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children; society can, however, educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those who plan to remain childless.
If survived, intense trauma from unhindered toxic abuse typically results in a helpless child’s brain improperly developing. If allowed to continue for a prolonged period, it can act as a starting point into a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. I consider it to be a form of non-physical-impact brain damage.
The lasting emotional and/or psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head. It’s like a discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly one will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is treated with some form of medicating, either prescribed or illicit.
The wellbeing of ALL children — and not just what other parents’ children might/will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — needs to be of real importance to us all, regardless of how well our own developing children are doing. A mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.
____
“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.228)
Dec 24, 2021 @ 05:01:46
Thank you, I agree we are the product of our childhood. If only child abuse infact all abuse could be eradicated the world would be a better place. May I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas.
Jan 01, 2022 @ 01:38:48
Yes, quite. … Meanwhile, too many people will procreate regardless of their questionable ability to raise their children in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. I wonder how many instances there have been wherein immense long-term suffering by children of dysfunctional rearing might have been prevented had the parent(s) received, as high school students, some crucial child development science education by way of mandatory curriculum? After all, dysfunctional and/or abusive parents, for example, may not have had the chance to be anything else due to their lack of such education and their own dysfunctional/abusive rearing as children. If nothing else, such curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood.
I feel that if society is to avoid the most dreaded, invasive and reactive means of intervention — that of governmental forced removal of children from dysfunctional/abusive home environments — maybe we then should be willing to try an unconventional proactive means of preventing some future dysfunctional/abusive family situations. Sadly, though, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: “Why should I care—I’m soundly raising my kid?” or “What’s in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support child development education and health programs for the sake of others’ bad parenting?”
To quote Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint (Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School): “This is the most important job we have to do as humans and as citizens … If we offer classes in auto mechanics and civics, why not parenting? A lot of what happens to children that’s bad derives from ignorance … Parents go by folklore, or by what they’ve heard, or by their instincts, all of which can be very wrong.”
Being free nations, society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children; society can, however, educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those high-schoolers who plan to remain childless. … Mindlessly minding our own business on this matter has long proven so humanly devastating.
Jan 01, 2022 @ 07:25:39
Yes indeed mandatory parenting education for all children at school would be a perfect answer sadly there will always be those who are just, either through just not being capable or plain evil who will slip through the net.
I cannot understand why it is not taught at school . It is a very sad situation.
Jan 06, 2022 @ 01:12:03
When I asked a BC Teachers’ Federation official over the phone whether there is any childrearing or child-development science curriculum taught in any of B.C.’s school districts, he immediately replied there is not. When I asked the reason for its absence and whether it may be due to the subject matter being too controversial, he replied with a simple “Yes”.
This strongly suggests there are philosophical thus political obstacles to teaching students child development/rearing science. To me, it’s difficult to imagine that teaching parenting curriculum would be considered more controversial than teaching students Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) curriculum, beginning in Kindergarten, as is currently taught in B.C. public schools.
Jan 06, 2022 @ 07:13:08
If that is the case it is ridiculous. All I will say is you can teach people as much as you like but you can’t change human nature. There will always be bad apples in the barrel .