[QueenOfThePride]

I try not to talk about anyone I know in real life, but this is just bugging me. A little 5yo boy I know is cut. Supposedly boys aren't supposed to remember it. This boy is extrememly sensitive to getting hurt, he is so emotionally fragile over hurts that my two year old would ignore. I woke him up from a nap, and he awoke screaming and just about jumping out of his skin. His whole body was stiff, his arms outstretched and his fists clenched. It was actually frightening to me. Later that day, he said he had a nightmare of being trapped on a mountain and a girl was cutting his leg with a knife. The boy is obsessed with knives and swords and cutting things, which at his age, I guess is kind of normal. One day, I found him cutting the head off of a live fish with a plastic knife. And I know 'potty humor' is also quite normal at his age, but he pretends to or jokes about shooting and kicking and otherwise hurting himself and other children in the 'wee wee'. I always swiftly put a stop to it.

Either I'm seeing way more in this than there is, or society is ignoring the real consequences and trauma of infant genital cutting.

It just makes me feel icky.

 

[MommytoB]

Hmm, I know what you mean my son could end up falling down, bumping his head , getting all these scrapes not always crying he just goes on with his buisness even if he has a bloody knee. I am trying to get him so i can take him to wash of his knee then that is when he's start screaming.

He's two also.
I know my son gets nightmares but he don't wake screaming from them.

 

[DocsNemesis]

That would freak me out too! My ds is 6 (intact) and has a very high pain threshold. He does like to pretend things are swords or guns, but only on occasion and he has never talked about hurting anyone's "wee wee."
I read an interesting book years ago (I think it was stories from the cradle, something like that) about how kids that end up being in trouble as adults and also kids that hurt others (there are some very sad true stories in there, young kids deliberately hurting other kids/babies), about how they are seeing a correlation between their infancies and their mothers pregnancies and their behavior. I certainly can see how having to endure such horrible trauma right after birth could effect you psychologically for the rest of your life. I'm not saying all guys who were cut as infants end up becoming serial killers or something, but it cant be good for them.
I do know about 3 of the boys in our complex-one is 3 and is kind of violent, but then he is 3. However, the other cut boy I know is VERY violent, constantly getting into fights and is horrible to his mother too. The other boy is 9 if I remember right and is intact. He is a sweetheart. Ironically though, the intact boy is more sensitive to things than the other boy...not sure if thats a good or a bad thing.

 

[Britishmum]

Hmm, I'm as anti-circ as the best of 'em, but honestly, my two older children are so sensitive to hurts that a tiny scratch sends us home from the park in tears. It can take all day to recover emotionally from an injury so small that you'd need a magnifying glass to see it. And they are girls and uncut, as is my ds.

As for the violence and knives, maybe there is a link. However, in the UK, where circumcision is rare, there are lots of little boys I've known who have behaved as you described.

When it comes to nightmares, my girls react the way you describe if they are woken.

I really think that you are reading something into this child's behaviour that is unlikely to be relevant. And I'm not sure that it wuold ever be a good theory to 'put out there' as I"m sure that there are many people like me who could give you anecdotal evidence to counter what you are concluding about this little boy.

I do feel very sad for him though for the mutilation visited upon him by his parents.

 

[gristastic]

Circumcision aside, I have to say that the most disturbing part of this story (to me) is that this child is cutting the head off of a live fish with a plastic knife, in FRONT of an adult.

While pretty unfortunate for the fish, its also not exactly the kind of behavior that a healthy kid would part-take in. Do you know his parents well? Is there anything you can say to them? If I was told (by a reputable source) that my child was hurting animals, I'd get him into therapy, ASAP.

 

[hubris]

Poor kid. I'm not sure if his issues have anything to do with his circ or not. Regardless of whether they do, he needs some help. Ditto to the questions above about his parents. I hope you know them well enough to talk to them abou this.

The "no memory" pro-circ argument is nuts for a lot of reasons. Even *if* kids don't remember it, it still affects them. And I wouldn't be so sure that a newborn can't form a memory about it. My BIL was hospitalized for pyloric stenosis when he was about a week old. During that time he had an IV in his forehead. Ouch. YEARS later he had a series of dreams about people sticking a needle in his forehead and had headaches. MIL is convinced that they're related. Maybe he couldn't tell you "when I was a baby this happened", buth is body remembered. One of my brothers told my mom about his birth experience in amazing detail when he was 2. Newborns are conscious beings, their experiences *do* matter.

 

[nancyw]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gristastic Circumcision aside, I have to say that the most disturbing part of this story (to me) is that this child is cutting the head off of a live fish with a plastic knife, in FRONT of an adult. While pretty unfortunate for the fish, its also not exactly the kind of behavior that a healthy kid would part-take in. Do you know his parents well? Is there anything you can say to them? If I was told (by a reputable source) that my child was hurting animals, I'd get him into therapy, ASAP.

seems to me to be something more going on here than circ memory.
how well do do you know the family?
this would freak me out a bit....

 

[paminmi]

If I can offer you reassurance, my son is intact and was a most unhappy, fussy baby and turned into an unhappy, challenging toddler. Every video we have of him he's either whining or crying and hanging on me. We even have a video of my daughter's birthday party where he actually BIT me in the back of the arm when I wouldn't let him open one of the presents. (In all honesty, the only thing that got me through his first three years was nursing. I would put him to my breast and literally feel the prolactin flow and the calming start... Guess you could have called me a prolactin junkie, lol!)

When he started school, every drawing or art project that entailed making anything with a face (even Santa!) always came complete with monster fangs and copious amounts of blood dripping from them. I'm sure some of his teachers thought there was something wrong with him but there never were any problems. Now that he's almost 17 he enjoys video/computer games that involve war or other fighting. That just seems to be his personality and we have had no problems with him acting on anything.

 

[mamajo2004]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gristastic Circumcision aside, I have to say that the most disturbing part of this story (to me) is that this child is cutting the head off of a live fish with a plastic knife, in FRONT of an adult. While pretty unfortunate for the fish, its also not exactly the kind of behavior that a healthy kid would part-take in. Do you know his parents well? Is there anything you can say to them? If I was told (by a reputable source) that my child was hurting animals, I'd get him into therapy, ASAP.

Ditto. Thats a red flag....

 

[QueenOfThePride]

Well, his family goes fishing sometimes, and I think he's seen his dad clean fish. I don't know why he'd want to do that for fun. I did tell his mom about the incident.

 

[nikirj]

Yeah, my kids really enjoyed helping their Papa clean fish when we vacationed with him last year...they helped all the way through (catch, clean, cook, eat) and really got a kick out of it. Not so weird to mime that, I don't think. And my 4yo is pretty into violent fantasy play, as are so very many that I know in that age group; the ones I know that are circed (only one family, so take it with a grain of salt) are actually less violent in their make-believe than the rest of the group.

I think that the dream about getting a leg cut off would be really, really disturbing in this context...if it is recurring then yes, I DO think that this could be related to the circ trauma. Which is a scary thought, but a lot of kids say things about their newborn days and even in-utero time that end up making a certain amount of sense. We don't KNOW that they can't form memories of this time, and we do KNOW that they *sense* these things, which means that the potential to retain them exists.

 

[New Mexico Beach]

He does not sound a lot different than my 6yo (except for the harming of live animals...wtf?) and my son is intact.

 

[DocsNemesis]

I have no doubt that even if we cant conciously remember things from when we were newborns, we still remember in our subconcious and when we dream, those things come out. My son frequently has nightmares where he is a baby and they are hurting him-he was in the NICU for a few days as a newborn and I think that is what he is remembering.

 

[A&A]

There are documented studies (no I don't have links handy) that circ'd boys have lower thresholds of pain than either girls or intact boys.