YouSaid · the spoken record

Camila Batmanghelidjh

lines on the record: 47
first: 2006-10-22
most recent: 2006-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I just think yo yo's are so amazing, aren't they? They're kind of you do something, and yet you do nothing. And I love them”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but I tell you what I love Jean Porsach's being in nothingness. The minute you get the hang of being, he undoes it into nothingness. I love that book.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, in fact I would hate to find a child in my house when I get home I'm just so relieved that there is no child in sight. I really, you know, the level at which I operate in this work, I don't have anything to give at the end of the day to my own children, and I would hate my own children to be on the sidelines watching. You know, and there's so many repercussions, feelings of jealousy, you know, feeling that why am I taking care of other kids? You know, I anticipated all of this, didn't want to put my own children through it.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I made that choice very young actually. I had a sense of it then, and then I think when I was about eighteen nineteen, I knew that that's what I had to do.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I watched my grandfather, who was a very vocational person as he is a pediatrician, and he absolutely loved his work. People used to queue up in the streets to see him And I could see that he was torn between his vocation and his family, and I decided that I had to make a choice it was either my own family having my own children, or honouring this vocation what I was clear about is that I couldn't do both at the same time, and I have not regretted one second of it.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really make time to spiritually retard, so I make sure because you can get really depleted. I'm a very spiritual person, I'm not religious, but I'm profoundly spiritual. You know, I think I just have an intuitive structure. You know, I just have an intuitive structure around this area. And, you know, I think that if I did anything different I wouldn't be true to myself”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My seventh record is Bob Marley's Redemption Song, and I think Bob Marley has developed into a kind of street philosopher for the kids. This is the person that actually they admire the most. Here you are, these criminal kids have some sense of quality.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I have realized is that a lot of politicians are cowards. Privately they know, and often behind closed doors they'll say to me Ah, the public will never accept that Camilla, but it's true what you're saying, and I want to turn round to them and say where's your guts? Where's your leadership? You know, the science of it is there for everyone to see that actually compassion and love develops the brain and develops control.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thresholds of intake into social services are so high because they're short of money, they don't take the cases, and when people ordered the numbers of children with mental health and emotional difficulties or the scale of child abuse in this country, they ought it what's got on in, not what's been left outside the doors”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is very difficult for a lot of people to accept, but you've got to understand that no child is born a criminal or a killer. Something happens to that child, and my anger is that society is not there when these children are being abused behind closed doors. The making of a criminal child is five, six, seven, eight, nine years. Where was civil society all that time? Recently I analyzed the social services statistics because they're very difficult to get hold of. But in one borough, for example, in one year seven thousand one hundred sixty five children were referred to social services. So that's quite extreme. Someone picked up the phone worrying about a child. Of that group only two hundred fifteen got registered on the child protection register. So actually because the threat”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually think that you do have to reply with robust compassion. You have to be very firm, they are dangerous, and we take precautions against that danger because they can't regulate themselves. But what the problem is is that punishment for the sake of punishment doesn't teach these kids anything. What you're looking for is restoring to the child the capacity to empathize. Without it these children are dangerous”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am actually and not from the children, funnily enough, but from their parents, and I have I have been threatened with guns, I've been threatened, you know, with all sorts of things kidnapping every day, every day it's a lucky day”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very tricky because it was a lot of the established people didn't want therapy outside the clinics, and I was taking therapy to the inner cities inside the schools, and letting children self refer, and I don't think anything could have prepared me for the underbelly of children that I discovered, you know, in these schools. My next record is Luther Vandros and Dance with My Father. The lyrics are beautiful, and it's the thoughtfulness of a child looking back on his history.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were funding a post, and I interviewed was very young but with a lot of qualifications, and then I realized the central flaw in the care for children, and that is the assumption that behind every child is a responsible carer who's going to take them to an appointment. And it really got to me, you know, and I remember a referral of a seven year old who was trying to kill herself by putting a reading folder, plastic reading folder over her neck, and wrapping a towel round. And when I went to visit her and began working with her in her school, because I realized the parent wouldn't be able to bring her, she disclosed that she'd been sexually abused by three men since the age of five, and I think that just kind of did it because I thought here is a five year old who went through horrific experiences, had no one to talk to, what flawed structures we had.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I there were children who were biting their fingers drawing with the blood on the wall there were children who were smearing their feces. So there was a lot of disturbance. There was also a huge amount of love and they were taking their children to ballet classes, cello classes, whatever class there was. So there was a great effort to look after their children, but in some ways it had a thoughtlessness about it too.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very interesting because there is a similarity between the challenges that the children in Kensington Chelsea face and the similarity is the parents' inability to tune into the child's need.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've chosen Jacqueline to pray because I can relate to the fact that you could have such incredible music in you but not be able to play because of the degenerative illness she developed I cannot think of anything worse than having that level of gift and not being able to act on it.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was at university I was at Warwick, and whilst I was at Warwick I wasn't allowed to use my name. because they were very worried about repercussions, and the police there were very good, and then they were the ones who told me that my father had walked through the mountains from Iran to Turkey, and was at the borders and they were going to go and pick him up.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She eventually succeeded in committing suicide, she drove the ambulance from the hospital to a chemist, bought some pills, and then went to a hotel room and took her life.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, my sister became very disturbed by it, developed a sudden psychosis, having no history of mental illness, and actually attempted suicide, she tried to jump under a train and did jump under the train but survived.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother at the time was in France luckily, and but she I think she just found it really difficult and fell apart in a way because of the whole upheaval of it. We were left here with no money. And no status, and it was very difficult time. And what happened is that the school and my mother combined applied for political asylum, and I remember being in the dining hall, and the head teacher, Miss Colter, arriving, and saying You ne'er have news for you you now have political asylum, and me holding this tray my hand, and thinking I'm supposed to think something or feel something. But I just didn't know how to react. It was like was I supposed to be happy that I had political asylum, I'd lost my country, what was I supposed to feel?”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a very strange environment to be in because the school life was carrying on as normal, and on the news I was watching the flags being burnt and the beginnings of the revolution, and I got news that my father had been executed. And then they came back and said no, he's been imprisoned and couldn't get any news.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next piece of music is actually Amazing Grace. And when I first arrived at Sherbourne I didn't know about priests and all I could see was all these girls in a hall with a man dressed in black with a kind of white collar and as far as I was concerned he was shouting, you know. So I sense sort of chills up my spine”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was the one he did a specialized assessment and contacted the school I had a reading age of seven and he told them that they had to get taper quarters in and you know let me thrive basically.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was more battle. I wasn't gonna give in, I had to be true to myself, and you know, I needed my intellectual life, and there was a very amazing neurologist who saved my life there, actually.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the first two years, and then I think on the third year I decided it was revolution. I wasn't going to have it anymore.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will I was completely shocked totally shocked by the constraint of the place, and completely out of my depth I couldn't keep up with the academic work, ended up in the bottom set, with clearly five other mistakes. And you know, I was thinking, oh my God, I'm going to survive here.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“shock, I must say, because, you know, I'd come from an avalanche mountain skiing every afternoon to this school where the girls had to walk down one side of the corridor and go up the other side, and a school uniform with a tie and I used to stretch my school jumper wet it and stretched it over the chest of drawers, so that at least I had some movement in this bloomin' uniform, you know”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unconventional education we were only about fifteen children in the mountains of Switzerland. It was only three hours education, it wasn't in any way structured, so you could do what you liked. You know, I didn't do any maths, didn't really write anything. They tried to teach me some writing, but actually, you know, it wasn't to be.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next piece of music is Nomakit Paqu, and it's because of my French kind of experiences that I chose that. And I think poetically he's brilliant.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we do is no drugs are allowed on the premises at all. So we're very strict about that. Weapons we know that a lot of these kids carry weapons in order to protect themselves. If we're aware of it, we take it off them, but we don't do a search, and touch wood we haven't had any problems with that because we control the place through emotional contracts. It's much more powerful than surveillance cameras.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might. You might actually say to them, you know, right now I'm going to stop you from doing this for your own safety, and because I know you're going to regret hurting someone. That's a very different thing to saying you're horrible. I'm going to stop you. And what we find is that the children then appreciate having been stopped because these kids are so dysregulated that when they lose it they really lose it.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they do. And, you know, we're whilst we're very warm and caring, we're very vigilant. So actually staff have all had training in compassionate restraint. We've got the Dala Lama's security man down to train all the staff in compassionate restraint. And with a view to the team.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because if you think of a child who's had every possible violation, they've been beaten, battered, they've had so much violence that they're not going to be afraid of the little threat of violence that society puts in front of them. And they are at a point where they don't care if they live or die. So what we do to them to terrorize them is meaningless to them. What surprises them is when someone can see some good in them and can show them love, because the battle is these children are finished with living, and that's why they're so powerful. They're like suicide bombers, they don't care if they destroy themselves in the path.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally loved and cherished, you know, they used to say that I was a little gift, you know, but even though I couldn't do anything you know, but they had this love for me it was amazing.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I remember this music and I could feel that I wanted to do the jumps and everything else, but actually I couldn't coordinate enough to be able to do it.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next piece of music is Shahzad and I remember this music because I so badly wanted to be able to figure skate. I could skate very well.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very ill I was very premature, only one kilogram, and they didn't put me in an incubator and they thought I would die so they sent me home to die. And I think I had a lot of problems because of the prematurity. I couldn't spell, I was struggling in school. I was finding I couldn't read the time, I couldn't tie my shoelaces, and I think my family just thought, you know, what was this?”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I think that they're the ones that tuned me into poverty, I think, and discrepancy, as I remember being shocked that the maid lived in another room somewhere with five of her children in the same room, and I suddenly realized that actually their lifestyle was very different to ours now.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's chandeliers very much, in fact I walked into St. James's palace, looked up and thought the chandeliers were rather low key compared to the ones in my house.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She is very much around, but our lifestyle was very different. My mother was a very beautiful, gregarious character with blue eyes, and there was a lot of very big parties. My brother and I used to lie on our stomachs down the stairs because you'd have the Queen of So and so Ambassador So and so everybody with their jewellery arriving in our house and the waiters just running around trying to sort them out. So actually the night and day were reversed so daytime was quite quiet night time the place came alive.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was extraordinary actually because I had no idea we were wealthy, you know, this is the thing. So I just the staff were cooks and maids and my father had a massive sports centre which he had built with ice skating rings, swimming pools, ski sort of resort, the ice palace it was called. And we spent the entire time there in”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because of your wealth, yeah. I didn't realize that. I just thought that any child who was born was supposed to be kidnapped. I thought that was completely normal.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've chosen the mocking bird by Eminem because these kids taught me about rap, and I think this song is an indication of the regret and the apology of father who hasn't been meeting his child's needs experiences.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that it's romantic, I think it's realistic, and I acknowledge that they're really unpleasant. Remember, you know, I have to look after my staff and protect them against the unpleasantness of these children. You know, the debate is divided into demons and angels, and civil society perceives itself as angelic, and these children are the vehicles for demonic feelings, whereas the truth is that civil society is just as responsible for the way these children behave in damaging ways.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They need what every child needs, they need loving care, they need nurture, they need somewhere safe to stay, and this is the thing I think often people forget the humanity of these children, and typical arrival is maybe a thirteen year old boy. He's been run by drug dealers careering drugs. He's got health issues, he's not been in school since he was ten years old, and what he wants is somewhere safe. And then after a few days of trusting us, he will go and bring his younger siblings. And the younger siblings are usually in households, where maybe the parent is suffering from mental health difficulties or drug addictions. And what's really moving is these children's loyalty, total loyalty to their parent.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, possibly, because I think they can be quite frightening, they can be quite dangerous, they can harm people. You know, I can understand why people would be frightened of them. I love those children very much, but I'm fully aware of the fact when they first arrive they can be very dangerous. So we take precautions in case they lose it.”
2006-10-22 · Desert Island Discs · Camila Batmanghelidjh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source