Why kids don't tell

People often ask why I didn't tell someone what was happening to me as a child. I have thought a lot about this and have finally come up with an answer that fits for me. A therapist will give reasons why children remain silent. I have heard them all, and agree with them...but I need more. I want to see more fully from a child's eyes and understand from a child's heart. That shouldn't be hard with so many internal children, except that kids don't have words for such things, so I have to take what they feel and verbalize it.

1) I did tell. Not a lot of people, but enough that someone could have responded. When no one responds, a child stops trying. It is more important to hold onto hope than to risk telling and not be taken seriously. More on hope later...
2) There are usually enough normal/good things in a child's life to make reality too confusing. It is crazy-making to hold onto two realities at the same time. A child will want to sort it out...but that isn't possible.
3) My fathers retribution was not worth the risk of telling. 
4) The perp's threats are terrifying.
5) Perp's always blame the child.
6) It felt like to me that my father was omnipresent. It felt like he knew everything I did, thought or felt. In order to preserve hope and not die, I "needed" to take the blame for the abuse. If I would bathe more often, comb my hair, make better grades, be more quiet, then maybe daddy would love me and stop hurting me.

I have always thought that the opposite of death is life...but there are many ways to die as well as many ways not to be alive. I rather think now that Hope is the opposite of death.

There is a huge difference between cognitive and emotional understanding. As an adult, I can know something but not be able to emotionally accept it as fact. I can handle waiting until the emotional catches up to the cognitive. As a child there was no way I could do either. Cognitively I KNOW the abuse WAS NOT MY FAULT and that I had NO CONTROL over my fathers actions. These things I know for sure now. But as a child I could not know that without dying. To have acknowledge that I had no control over my life would have stripped away all hope. With no hope that life would improve, I would have died.

Maybe I am slow...and everyone else has already figured out the connection between life and hope and keeping silent. Part of my process now is to emotionally acknowledge and accept the fact that I had no control over my life...and to do it now without dying or losing my mind.