Yesterday I asked readers to imagine an ideal setting and context for the birth of a child and to reflect on their own contexts and circumstances of birth, childhood and growing up years…..

Today, I invite readers to imagine the antithesis of that perfection in order to taste a child’s experience of an anxious, conflicted environment where the womb, crib, family, school, the entire context and journey is constantly jolted with survival anxiety. 

These are, what I call, “crossfire children.” 

He or she, the infant, and the siblings are caught in the crossfire of adult overt and covert conflict. 

Parents and caregivers are in conflict and the crib shakes. 

The crossfire child – trapped in the middle of parent addictions and stressors – has an overwhelming desire to be noticed, accepted, affirmed, protected, understood and appreciated while living in what a child may perceive and know as real-time danger. 

Mom and dad fight – and anxiety strikes all who are in the family and home. 

Imagine a dynamic (changing) environment where primary caregivers and authority figures are sources of complex multi contrasting messages of fear, uncertainty, danger, discomfort and sometimes comfort; where fight and flight are foreign concepts (to an infant and growing child) but are familiar intimate and powerful experienced emotions.

But a few months ago …….. !