I keep thinking about the poor child of the San Bernardino terrorists. In his book, Bill Ayers tells the story of his adoptive son whose dumb parents dropped him off at grandma’s as a toddler because they wanted to go commit some acts of terror.
Ayers and his wife adopted the kid but, obviously, he began to unravel psychologically. The boy was well on the way to becoming a sociopath, a criminal, or a drug addict (or all three) but, thankfully, his adoptive parents and his grandparents were not only very educated but also extremely wealthy people. They hired a team of ultra-expensive psychoanalysts to work with the boy. It took a couple of decades and a fortune but the boy was finally rehabilitated and integrated into society.
The likelihood that anybody in the San Bernardino baby’s life has the intelligence and the resources to invest into her long-term psychological care is nil. And if the baby is allowed to remain with the horrible grandma, a.k.a. terrorist factory, there will be no hope left for her.
Clarissa's Blog 
At 6 months’ age, this may not be any more of a problem as any other child raised by a single grandparent. (As if this was in any way not a bad start to begin with.)
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No, this is much much worse than if she’d been at least 3. A separation from both parents before the age of 1 is devastating to a child’s psyche. And things are especially bad since the mother was obviously in an abnormal mental state throughout the pregnancy and the first months of the child’s life. The baby was born and introduced into the world in a highly chaotic environment (we’ve all seen the footage of that apartment) with volatile, enraged parents and surrounded by dangerous weaponry. There is hardly a worse start to one’s life. 😦
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No, this is much much worse than if she’d been at least 3. A separation from both parents before the age of 1 is devastating to a child’s psyche.
By separation do you mean being made an orphan or are other separations applicable? How is is more devastating if you never knew them?
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First of all, she did know them. She knew her mother for 15 months, and that’s all she knew because for such a small baby, her mother is her whole world.
The problem is that she won’t have any memories of her own that she will be able to verbalize. In the absence of concrete memories, it’s extremely hard to work through the trauma. An older child at least has something specific to work with, and here the kid will only have the narratives given to her by others.
“By separation do you mean being made an orphan or are other separations applicable?”
Any separation. My father left for another city for several months when I was an infant. He left for work, and it was just a physical absence, he wasn’t leaving me symbolically. He came back before I could generate any actual memories. And I’m still only capable of either having only deeply symbiotic relationships with men or not have any relationships of any depth at all.
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