"But School Doesn't Count"

 When we are talking about child abuse and childhood trauma, a term that gets brought up very frequently is "growing environment". Time and time again, it has been stated that the kind of growing environment a child has during their formative years has a huge effect on the kind of person they will become when they step into their adulthood. A safe growing environment provides a sense of security, instills trust in your parents and other seniors, feelings of being cared of and loved. Those experiences are important in the development of self-esteem and healthy self-image, as well as feeling like you can trust the people around you, and if something were to happen with them, you'd be equipped to defend yourself and get that sense of security back. 

An unsafe growing environment, on the other hand, is perfect for the child to develop trust issues and experience chronic fear and anxiety due to the constant feeling of insecurity and threat around them. A child who grows up in an environment where they are being abused, neglected, and punished wrongfully is more likely to have major self-esteem issues, suffer from depression and anxiety as an adult, and in extreme cases, even be traumatized and develop illnesses like borderline personality disorder. 

But what is included in "growing environment", exactly? What does it consist of?

but i'm not your family.

 Typically, when we're talking about the growing environment of a child, we are referring to the home of the child, their family and the dynamics between the family members. Growing environment sometimes even becomes synonymous to "childhood home", including the parents and the siblings and everyone else who might live there with you. That is what most people are thinking about when they hear the term, and that is what most medical professionals are asking of you when they ask, "what kind of growing environment did you have as a child?". 

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In Finland, kids start school at the age of six or seven, depending on what time of the year they are born. Generally speaking, though, every Finnish child is mandated to start basic education the year of their 7th birthday, and they have completed the mandatory education when they turn 18 years old. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but this is the baseline of the Finnish education legislation for children and adolescents. 

From the of age 7 onward, the child spends anything between 4 hours to 8 hours every weekday at school. There are 190 school days in the entire school year, and since the average amount of hours in one school day is 6 hours, every Finnish kid spends approximately 1140 hours at school every school year. In every school year (190 days), the overall amount of hours is 4560. On average, the time every Finnish child spends at school is one fourth of the entire school year.

So what if those 1140 hours are filled with threat, danger, abuse, attacks, punishments, and neglect? Wouldn't that count as something substantial in the child's development, or, dare I say, growing environment? 

Apparently not. 

So many times my trauma has been invalidated because of where it happened. So many times my experiences of daily abuse have been brushed aside because my abusers were not my family members. So fucking many times I have been told I cannot be traumatized because my GROWING ENVIRONMENT was overall safe and secure. 

"Oh, your school? Yeah that doesn't really count, you see, you can always opt out from going to school. There are other options."

Ah, yes, mandatory education? We don't know her. 

Thumping lawbooks,

ichigonya