Oh, no - I most definitely do not think my mother used to rock me in a cradle when I was a little itty bitty baby.
Actually, - the reality of my early babyhood was that I would seriously have starved had not been for a neighbor of my grandmother's who told my mother: Give your daughter a bottle, - then she will stop crying all through the night.
I got a bottle, and I stopped crying, - for a while.
My mother felt guilty, - this was not what her husband the doctor wanted. At that time child raising should go by the book, and the book said regular meals, - regular, - and breastfeeding is best.
After some time the young couple needed a short holiday and sent their year old daughter to a children's "pension", - not an orphanage, but close.
After a week they came back refreshed, - the young thing who had been well taken care of, had started to suck her thumb and had become quite difficult.
I probably was a difficult child, - I do not really remember. But I do remember sucking my thumb, - for years and years: cozily curled up in my bed with my left thumb safely stuck in my mouth sucking away, into sweet sleep.
This was not proper, - not according to "the book", and before I was four all the different attempts to stop me sucking my thumb had started, - however, to no avail. Not even having my arm put in in a cast helped, - as soon as the cast came off (not without difficulties, I still have a scar to show for it), my thumb went back into my mouth at night.
Surprize, all this thumbsucking affected my teeth. Years later corrective work was started. At that time you did not have the "grid" stuck to your teeth. The metal grids were fastened on a clump of plastic that you was supposed to keep in your mouth as much as possible. That meant during the time of doing homework, and at night.
I spat THAT THING out during the night, - of course, it was not a comfortable thing to keep in your mouth. To "help me" keep it in my mouth, my competent and nible father made me a "face harness". No it did not at all look like the face mask Anthony Hopkins wore as Hannibal Lecter, and it was probably also more comfortable as it was made from cloth, - but it was a restraint.
As was the cast on my arm years earlier.
For years I did not think about that part of my childhood, - not untill the arm cast was mentioned in a talk with a psychiatrist and I realized the man was shocked.
Why was he shocked, - I had understood perfectly that it had to be done since I was a bad girl? I thought it was normal. The thing to do. Appearently it was not.
Then in a talk with a colleague, childhood and thumbsucking came up. She told me that her parents made long stiff tubes for both ofv her arms (her father was not a surgeon like mine, thus did not have access to the same materials my dad did) so that she could not cuddle up and suck her thumb, but had to lay on her back with her arms stiff and straight. Her sister fated worse, - she was put in a room on her own, given food and drink, but no bodily contact - she was experimented on by a presumably sane, well educated father, very much interested in psychology! This girl had been given the Skinner box treatment, - and this happened in the fifties. Shocking.
Our parents loved us. We were well treated, wll fed and well clothed. But this was a different time from today. All they did, they did for us, they did not realize what they did to us psychologically.
Today they would have risked loosing their children, had it become known what they did. But, it was a different time, - as I said over and over again to my therapeut when he said - "oh, go on defending your father".
I am glad I talked with my collegue. That we had our very open talk. Now I really know. It was not just my father, - it happened to a lot of us, but it was another time.
I sincerely hope we now, have not damaged our children, - we most certainly have not meant to, we love them so much. But, only time will show.
