I just visited a blog site, and I noticed something there that brought back a memory to me. When my son was very little, we had a controversy in the collage, between two sociology professors, as to how difficult it is to raise a child wrong. One said it was very difficult. That you really had to work hard to ruin a child.Eventually, they will grow up, no matter what you do, as long as they can survive long enough to become adults, and move away from the improper influence.They just had to hang around long enough to get big,and then they would find their own way.
The other said, no your wrong. All you have to do, is to treat that child as though they don't matter, they don't come first,and ignore their needs and neglect them when they deserve your supervision.It's not enough, they said, just to see to it that the kid hangs around long enough to get big. While they are growing up, you have to actually teach them something. Make an impact on their awareness, get and keep their attention, so that they will mind you without constant resistance to avoid being unruly and even violent people. So, they said, it is easy to ruin a kid, and it is difficult to raise them right.
I seriously doubt the truth of the former, and have a case in point to prove the latter. Take,for instance, the family of "Lynn, the Loon."
I met Lynn after she had her five children. She had been married three times, but none of her children were from any of her husbands. She currently had a boyfriend "in residence", and he did most of the cooking and cleaning as well as most of the parental duties.Neither Lynn, nor her boyfriend had regular jobs. She drew a public aid check, because she had never worked,and had no marketable skills, as well as the fact that she had some mental problems. He did odd jobs to make ends meet, when the need grew the greatest, and when he could find a lawn to mow, or a walk to shovel. Lynn spent her time seated on the couch, watching television, and doing all sorts of crafts.When the children got on her nerves, Lynn would yell at them,and then go back to her stories, and her puzzles, or beading or whatever she happened to be working on.Of course, the children knew she wasn't going to get off the couch and enforce her screaming, so they did what they liked, until the boyfriend got home,and then they seemed to shape up. When time came that the oldest,a boy, moved out of the house, he moved in with his girlfriend,they had a couple of kids and he followed in his "stepfathers" footsteps,and did odd jobs, but wasn't looking for a real job. He prefered to play video games, and so, his girlfriend signed up for public aid as well. Then, the oldest of the four remaining girls at home met a young man, and they got engaged.That's when the trouble started.The whole family found this young man delightful and fun, if a little strange, because for one thing, he had a full time job. For another, he did not believe in just living together.Each time he took his girl out, at the end of the evening she would try to seduce him, and tease him to go further and further with their love-making, but he would draw back at a certain point, and she would pout.They began to have fights over his resistance,and the time he spent away from her because of his work. The young man would come to call at the house,and was invited for holiday meals, and throughout the courtship, he began to notice some very strange goings on in the home. Other than the obvious, previously stated, he noticed that the "stepfather" was in the habit of "tucking the girls into bed" at night, and seemed to take an extraordinary amount of time doing it, with each girl, with their bedroom door closed.He wondered about this, and thought it peculiar, but was uncertain what, if anything he should do about it. Then, the mother announced that she was going on vacation, and that the children, and the "stepfather" would be staying home. When the young man questioned his intended bride about this, she told him that her mother did this every summer. Her mother was going, as she always did, to spend several months with her parents, and would be back by the time school started in the fall. Over the summer, The young man and his soon to be bride spent several sessions talking about the unusual situation in the home, and by the time the mother returned, they confronted her with the announcement that the "stepfather" had been systematicaly molesting the three oldest girls. She didn't want to believe it, but when her oldest daughter told her that it had started when she was seven,and the youngest girl was about to turn seven, and was in all likelihood next on the list, the mother agreed to at least listen to her girl's stories.One by one, they went into another room with their mother,and told her what had happened to them,alone. By the end of the evening, the mother was convinced that she had turned a blind eye to what was going on right under her nose, to keep this man in the family to be her companion, and run the house for her, so she could do other things, and not have to deal with day to day work and worry.With the support of her oldest daughter's fiancee, and his family, she agreed to move herself and her children out of the house for a week, and stay with her daughter's fiancee's family, file a complaint against this man, and wait until he was arrested before returning home,and that she would testify against him in court. Once this was accomplished,it was only a matter of weeks before one daughter started cutting herself, another ran away to be a prostitute, and the youngest had her seventh birthday. The mother went totally bonkers,and signed herself into a mental ward. The oldest daughter married her young man, without the presence of his mother-in-law, and they set up housekeeping.The youngest daughter went to live with her brother and his girlfriend,to be a live-in babysitter, while the children's mother had the third child.Once she came home from the mental ward, the mother went from episode to episode, while trying to deal with the fact of being alone,and knowing she had one daughter on the streets, and the other was still cutting herself. That's when family services stepped in, and told her that either she must put her two girls left in her custody into foster care, or they would go to a correctional facility.Then, the runaway came home, so two went into foster care,and the cutter went to a girls home, for intense counseling. The whole family was totally destroyed, because the mother was not being a mother. She left it up to a stranger, whose only motive in being in the home, was to be able to have free access to this woman's lovely vulnerable daughters.
I wish I had a happy ending for this story, because we all love that, but it is a true story,and there is no happy ending, even for the daughter that got married.Before they were able to celebrate their second wedding anniversary, the girl ran off with another man, and began drinking heavily.Once divorced, she ran around, turned around and married another man, had four little ones, and then died at the age of 27, of liver failure. The "stepfather" had corrupted the morals of almost every child in that home, even the littlest, who, incidentally, was his very own daughter, and had, by his own admission, been his intended next target. She knows what happened, and why, and may never live it down.
And now, you know, how to ruin a kid, without really trying.All you have to do is ignore them, neglect to correct them, and rely on others to fulfill your role as protector.
OUI?
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