[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry's Summer Holidays Post Voldy

[heidi]

No: HPFGUIDX 828



snuffles wrote:onsor -------------------------~-~>

> THey don't know and they don't care. Which leads me to wonder how
> come HP is as sane as he is. esentially a very neglected child - yet
> his lanugage and social skills are good. the wonder of books I guess.

This response is going to use some personal experience to explain a pet
theory of mine. And just a reminder to all of you - JKR was raising a baby
at the same time as she was finishing Book 1.
I've got a 13 month old son, and have spent a good bit of time over the past
18 months reading "parenting" books, including a very interesting book
called Dream Babies which analyzes parenting books and advice from the
1700's until 1981 (see the year?!?). One thing I've learned is that if you
have an "attached" relationship with your baby in the first year, your baby
is more likely to be a "resiliant child", even if (God Forebid!) s/he
suffers subsequent trauma. If the child is subsequently neglected, as Harry
clearly was, bad psychological things could happen, but not as badly as if
said child had been traumatized from birth.

I assume that for his first 15 months, Harry had a terrificly stable
upbringing, great, loving parents (ok, maybe James spent time away from home
on anti-voldemort things...) and a lot of love at home.
Then, boom, things go wrong.
We next see him almost ten years later, sleeping in a cuboard, but able to
visit the rest of the house.
And he's not horrible. Why?
Is it the whole Cinderella thing, where she's just so inherently good that
the horribleness of her situation doesn't reduce her unfailing goodness?
Possibly - I mean, this part of the story is the closest to traditional
fairy tales (but then again, in the traditional Perrault and Grimm
cinderella stories, she had her father until he was somewhere between 5 and
9) - but there might be another explanation. Or two.
My pet theory? I believe that when the Dursleys found him on their doorstep,
and something in the letter made it very clear to them that they couldn't
drop him off at the nearest orphanage, (a) Grunnings was a very modern
company which had a free childcare service for all its employees, and Vernon
just dropped Harry off every morning at 8 and picked him up at 6:30, and
thereby allowed Petunia to spend all her time with Dudders, (b) even if he
doesn't remember it, Harry's magical abilities allowed him to "improve"
things in the cuboard until his memories of his parents & his prior "life"
started to fade away.
Babies remember things - you spend enough time with a 13 (or, I assume, a
15) month old, and you see that even if they haven't done something or
played with a toy or seen a book for 2, 3, even 4 months, they'll remember
it when they see it. They're generally walking and talking, and unless
Hagrid gave him a little sleeping draught, Harry was a pretty good sleeper
at 15 months.  And if they have the personality for it, babies play on their
own better than they play with others. And if you're a wizard baby, and
you're spending every night in a crib in a dark room, you'll amuse yourself
by making the nightlight flash on & off, by sending your blanket flying
around the room, by climbing out ofthe crib (yes, at that age, they do!) and
going into the box of old toys of Dudley's and playing with them.
And psychologists have found that while a 5 year old can't remember things
from when he was 2, a 3 year old can remember things from when he was 1.
Even if 10 year old harry has no memories of his parents, 3, and maybe even
4 year old Harry did - and that probably helped a lot with keeping him on a
more even keel than he would've been if his parents had been killed when he
was, say, 3 months old.
The other conclusion I'm reaching in all of this is, even though Harry was
clearly neglected, and even though he was clearly hit on occasion (well,
more frequently than that), some of the things that occur in serious child
abuse situations don't seem to be done by the Durselys - it says in the book
that he was never "actually starved", when Petunia flings the frying pan at
him, it doesn't get more extreme than that, Harry, in the scene with Aunt
Marge, seems actually a little surprised by the idea of a cane, etc.
Obviously child neglect is a very very serious problem for the growth and
development of a baby and child, but given a certain set of circumstances,
it's not going to automatically turn that child into a complete ruin of a
person.

Enough baby-book-based child psychology. Back to the fiction!