I just inherited a case this past week. Mom and her boyfriend and her 17 yr old son were busted for drugs. The boy was taken into foster care. He hadn't been to school for over a year and is barely in 10th grade. Mom was sent for an assessment at a drug treatment center where she had once worked....and ran off with a client. It was recommended that she enter a residential treatment program and the information to contact them was written down for her. She was seen and heard as she walked away, tearing up the referral and saying, "I don't care. He'll be 18 next year, then he'll come home anyway." How do you deal with somebody like that?
I know it's a rhetorical question but I really don't know... it seems almost impossible. Though I do know people who cleaned themselves up and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, thanks to one role model such as yourself in their lives. There is so much of that attitude in Tucson - there's a huge population of drug addicts, bums, impoverished, people who don't care about their kids. Tucson is that way for a lot of reasons (close to border, mainly service industry jobs, good climate, so forth). Anyway, I hear a lot of these people's comments (like the one you quoted) when I'm out shopping, and it is hard to take.