Michael Olenick has spent his life pondering the preschool years. His mother, a childhood development professor, was one of the first Head Start teachers back in the 1960s, so he started preschool at age 3.
credit: CCRC
In some ways, he has never left that space. Olenick, a lifelong advocate for children and families and president of the Child Care Resource Center, a California-based advocacy organization, has long been a champion of early childhood education, having seen its power to uplift lives firsthand. But he worries that the educational system often pits the needs of one age group of children against another.
For instance, he worries that the rollout of transitional kindergarten, or TK, not only has undermined the preschool sector by stealing away some of its 4-year-olds. He also notes that TK is poised to run into a number of speed bumps ahead, including a lack of facilities and the need for more child developmental training, as it reaches full implementation in the fall.
Olenick, who received his Ph.D. from UCLA in educational psychology and has shaped the field with influential research on the importance of quality child care, recently made time to chat about his passion for early education and what he sees as the key challenges facing TK.
What fascinates you most about early ed?
My mother said that I always liked kids because I always had to be there in her classrooms. To me, it’s the most hopeful period of time, the opportunity to change kids’ trajectories the most. It’s the most hopeful time in life.
What are the biggest challenges in the expansion of TK? Do you worry about too much academic rigor, potty training incidents, the need for nap time?
All of those issues. In the ’80s I evaluated hundreds of preschool programs and kept running into large numbers that were drilling children on colors, numbers and letters for inordinate amounts of time. Boys had a harder time with this than girls. In looking at teacher qualifications, I saw lots of certificated teachers who were doing the drilling. I realize that’s a long time ago, but I keep hearing from colleagues seeing the same thing now. That’s why we pushed for early childhood education units for TK teachers. The other issue that comes up is many schools are designed for children to go to the bathroom unescorted. Four-year-olds can get lost there.
What do you think is the root source of the problem? A lack of understanding of child development, like the realities of potty training?
I don’t think most current teachers understand early development. Over time, this may right itself if they get the education they need. But principals have to have the expectation that TK is not first grade. Also, teachers do not generally handle toileting issues, and schools are not designed for 4-year-olds.
Is the academic pressure too high today?
I recently got an email from my first adviser at UCLA saying she went to half a dozen TK classrooms, and it looked like first grade. I wrote her back and I said, I told you so. We don’t have enough people yet that understand that kids learn differently. People learn at different rates, and we try to put them all into the same box and have them all learn stuff at the same time. Some of them are just not ready yet. You have to individualize instruction.
Why do you think the TK take-up rate has been more sluggish than expected?
Some of the biggest challenges are in rural districts, where they can’t get a very large number to attend, and the lack of child-sized facilities, especially easily accessible bathrooms. Also, I don’t buy the part about this helping all lower-income children because their parents need a full-day, full-year solution, not just three hours. For families who have a predictable schedule, a 9-to-5 job, TK with aftercare probably works pretty well, but some families need more flexibility.
Why are small ratios so important?
There has always been the rationale for safety. But more recent literature focuses on individual interactions between adults and children, and the fewer children per adult increases interactions, learning and attachment.
Why is play so key in TK?
Play is so important. I’ve heard from several TK program directors who said it took their administrators five years to recognize that play was learning. It’s not just the teachers that need to be trained on what’s developmentally appropriate; it’s important for principals, too. You know, a principal comes into a classroom and expects to see that teacher up in front of that class teaching. So if you go in and you see all these kids are playing, you may not realize they are being taught. It’s all about how you structure things in the classroom because you can get the same results in a play environment. You don’t have to drill kids.
Do you think we focus on setting a solid preschool foundation too much when financial stability may be more important for families?
It’s at least as important. We do a lot of work with families that are below the federal poverty line, the poorest of the poor. There are classrooms where there are kids who seem to be defiant. There was one kid who, it turns out, was deaf, and it took a long time to get him checked. He wasn’t being defiant; he just couldn’t read our lips. We have to work to give families what they need.
Anand Giridhadaras is a brilliant thinker and writer. He did all of us a service by seeing a therapist to get advice about how to survive the return of Trump, the Abuser-in-Chief. His blog is called “The Ink,” where this post appeared.
We’ve gotten ourselves into an abusive relationship, and it’s one we can’t escape.
The abuser in question is Donald Trump. And by abuse, we’re not talking about abuse of power, real as that may be. We’re talking about emotional abuse, doled out by a narcissist with an unstoppable need to rebuild the world in his image and to use the most powerful office in human history as a treatment center for his wounded ego.
Whether Trump suffers from a real disorder — malignant or traumatic narcissism has been floated — is a matter of debate among psychiatrists and psychologists. Most professionals have refused to make a diagnosis without a clinical interview (the so-called “Goldwater rule”), though before the 2024 election 225 experts felt Trump presented clear enough signs that they published an open letterwarning of his threat to the nation since, in their estimation, if it quacked like a duck, it was a duck:
Trump exhibits behavior that tracks with the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s (DSM V) diagnostic criteria for “narcissistic personality disorder,” “antisocial personality disorder,” and “paranoid personality disorder,” all made worse by his intense sadism, which is a symptom of malignant narcissism. This psychological type was first identified by German psychologist Erich Fromm to explain the psychology of history’s most “evil” dictators.
We’ve talked often in the newsletter about the way autocrats can build support even without offering anything to their supporters by way of real material improvements, playing on the same deep emotional needs exploited by abusers within relationships and families.
Earlier this year we also looked back to Erich Fromm’s work to understand how Trump’s cultlike appeal depended on a bond of mutual emotional dependence between abuser and abused and against a threatening world — a bond Fromm called “group narcissism.”
“Even if one is the most miserable, the poorest, the least respected member of a group, there is compensation for one’s miserable condition in feeling ‘I am a part of the most wonderful group in the world. I, who in reality am a worm, become a giant through belonging to the group,”
The situation today is even more complex — and dire — than most expected early in the campaign, as Trump competes for power and attention with fellow narcissists: the oligarchs. And chief among them is the shadow president, Elon Musk, whose sense of his own omnipotence and importance is even stronger than Trump’s, and his vision of the future far more dystopian, and his disregard for humanity even more total.
To better understand the situation facing Americans (and, to be honest, everyone around the world) our Nastaran Tavakoli-Far talked to therapist Daniel Shaw about how we can use the techniques that have helped people survive cults, abusive relationships, and toxic families to face and process and maybe even transcend the second Trump administration.
As someone who’s done a lot of reporting on topics involving narcissists and cults, something that’s really striking to me is that the advice given to the people suffering is to get out, go “no contact,” or have as little contact as possible. If you need to speak to this problematic individual do it via a lawyer, you know that kind of thing of just staying as emotionless as possible and not getting involved.
Now, what I always wonder is, because I think a lot of people when they look at Trump and MAGA, I mean a lot of people have said to me, “This is similar to what happened in my family.” A lot of these dynamics, if you’ve been exposed to narcissism, it’s actually very relatable to a lot of people.
But this isn’t a situation where you can go “no contact” because these are the people in power. You’re in a situation where you actually have to engage with these people. You can’t just leave the cult and try and heal. So what is your advice in this sort of scenario?
Stay sane, stay humane, and don’t isolate, would be the three phrases I would use.
Going “no contact” is sometimes a very good idea, but not always. And it’s also an idea that’s been turned around by abusive narcissists who isolate victims from their own families. You know, it’s the same thing that happens in Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you criticize the community, you are disfellowshipped and nobody, not your children, your spouse, your parents, or anybody is allowed to ever talk to you.
In terms of going “no contact” in a political situation, well, you don’t have that option. What are you going to do if, for example, the government benefits that you’ve paid into the system are suddenly turned off and there’s no more Social Security? Are you just going to say “Well, I’m not going to have anything to do with that bad president who just did that to me?” Or are you going to get involved in whatever way possible to fight against it?
Going “no contact” in this situation could be enabling the perpetrator, enabling the autocrat and I think that’s important to understand. If we’re enabling the autocrat, we’re complicit in the autocrat’s abuse.
So what can we do right now? If I wanted to ask for some practical advice?
One of the things that I’ve taken to heart about the current situation is the advice of Timothy Snyder, the historian who has studied the rise and fall of democracies and autocracies in Eastern Europe. One of the things he says is to not submit in advance.
Now, in the case of traumatizing narcissists, having managed a successful seduction they will begin to then create more dependence and they do that paradoxically through becoming more belligerent and belittling and more humiliating or shaming. What that does is create a state of constant intimidation at the same time increasing the sense of dependence the victim has on the narcissist.
In the current situation, it’s clear that everyone who is an opponent of the Trump administration is meant to feel horrified, shocked, belittled, and intimidated. That is what I believe is important: not to submit to the intention to terrify, intimidate, and make people feel powerless and small. So not to submit to that means that I don’t allow myself to be paralyzed with fear. I don’t allow myself to be boiling with rage, and I don’t isolate myself. I remember and connect to what I love about being in the world, about being a person, what I love about other people, and to the people who love me. Staying connected, not isolating, and not allowing yourself to drown in fear or rage is not submitting in advance.
So that’s my sense of what’s important right now.
You mentioned staying sane and about keeping connections. This time around it seems a lot of people are either kind of checking out or not checking the news every day. A lot of people are saying “I just want to do something positive in my community or be there for my family.” and things like that. What do you think about that? Why aren’t people protesting?
Right. I think everybody got exhausted, those who voted against Trump were exhausted by the amount of energy and effort spent hoping to elect Harris. I do limit my exposure so that I can keep my sanity for the time being. I don’t think that’s wrong and I encourage people who need to do that to do it.
So staying sane and humane, having those connections, and speaking up, speaking to our political representatives and pushing them.
People who care about these issues, who do not want to enable autocracy in this country or in general, exist at every level of society, and each of us has a certain amount of power.
I speak primarily to other psychotherapists but some of my ideas can be useful in thinking about the political, so I try to speak where possible within my community. Each of us has a community, and if we can be vocal within our communities at least we can hope to make an impact, even on one person.
Groups will form that we may want to lend our support to, either financial support or volunteer support. I’m currently supporting Democracy Docket, for example, where Mark Elias has been conducting so many successful lawsuits against a lot of abuses of government. I am not a millionaire elite, so I make small donations on a regular basis. People can do that.
People can volunteer, they can protest and demonstrate. All of these things are happening. They will happen, I believe, to a greater extent.
We may be under the threat of martial law in Trump’s world. We’re under the threat of having the National Guard tear-gas us if we take to the streets. He’s already demonstrated that he will do that and he’s saying he’ll do it again. But to whatever extent possible we need to speak, whatever our community might be, no matter how small. If you hold beliefs about injustice, it’s worth speaking out.
So what, exactly, is a traumatizing narcissist?
The traumatizing narcissist is a person who — for various reasons, based on their developmental history — has developed what starts out as a fantasy of omnipotence.
Did you ever buy a lottery ticket? That’s a fantasy of omnipotence. We all have them. It was said by Freud that we start out as babies with a sense of omnipotence because everybody adores us. And that we have to grow up and lose that sense of omnipotence so that we don’t become narcissists.
A traumatizing narcissist doesn’t lose that infantile omnipotence. They go through some kind of traumatic humiliation growing up, and that leads them to the fantasy that they can be the most powerful person in the world and nobody can hurt them or humiliate them or make them feel small or weak. As that fantasy becomes a delusion, they start to be absolutely convinced of their superiority, of their infinite entitlement, and of their greatness.
Some traumatizing narcissists focus on an individual or a family. There they can exercise their delusion of omnipotence over a small group of people or over just one person. But their delusion can be so powerful that it invites others to join in. Often the delusion makes them charismatic and persuasive. They can become, in some cases, autocratic politicians. In other cases, they can become gurus, or they can become internet influencers. They have so much conviction in their own delusion of their own omnipotence that they persuade others to join.
Could you briefly describe the kind of people who join in? Who get into these kinds of relationships?
When people speak to me about having been in this kind of a relationship, they’re often full of shame and trying to understand what’s wrong with them. What I’ll say is, “Well, you were being vulnerable, which is very human.”
There is nobody who volunteers to be groomed and the traumatizing narcissist grooms people. We don’t volunteer for that. Some people may be more vulnerable to grooming than others but I’ve seen some very together, high-functioning people who got groomed by traumatizing narcissists, it’s not about being weak or unstable as a person. Look at Bernie Madoff, who convinced some of the most wealthy, creative, high-functioning people in the world that they should give him all their money.
I was very inspired when I left the cult I had been part of when I was younger by Erich Fromm’s book Escape from Freedom. He tried to understand what was happening in Germany which led people to believe that Hitler was a savior.
I think in a similar vein, people believe that Donald Trump is a savior, and part of the problem is that they are only being exposed to the information that Donald Trump wants them to have, which is the propaganda that is funded by millions and millions and millions of dollars by fossil fuel oligarchs and digital oligarchs. There is extraordinary support for Trump as the CEO and them as the board of directors of the new world they think they’re creating. It’s frightening because it is like they read Orwell’s 1984 and decided the hero was Big Brother.
I would call these people malignant narcissists rather than traumatizing narcissists because they’re not just narcissistic, they’re also sociopathic and they believe that there is no law that they should have to obey, that they make the laws.
Sorry, when you say these people, do you mean Trump, or do you mean Trump and the tech bros and fossil fuel bros?
The group of elites who support autocrats. The autocrat and the elites that support the autocrat are people who see themselves as a superior race of people, entitled to rule over everyone else. Their solution for poor people is to create a jail system.
One of the major thinkers in the tech world has proposed that poor people be made into biofuel, that the prison system could become a factory for creating biofuel out of human beings. These things sound unbelievable. But they are being said publicly.
Yes, that’s the person. He’s extremely influential over Vice President JD Vance, and Peter Thiel is a big disciple of his, as are quite a few other billionaires in the tech world.
So we have an elite oligarchy in support of an autocrat. But why do people view Donald Trump as a savior?
There are a lot of reasons. But what Erich Fromm said is that people are afraid of freedom. They are uncertain of how to be free. And when they feel that there is a powerful leader, it’s like that becomes a magical person who they can feel safe and protected by. The allure of somebody promising absolute total protection, who seems very strong and very powerful and very certain, that is a very powerful allure.
To be a free person means that you have to provide yourself with a sense of safety and you have to create safety in your community.
credit: CCRC
