INDEED.
Certainly my own parents messed up royally in a list of ways.
But they had a hard life. And their parents more or less did the best they knew how, too. My parents basically had a good heart and more or less did the best they knew, too.
HOWEVER, for Christians, at some point, there’s no excuse. Most parents that screw up IGNORE THE SCRIPTURE: PROVOKE NOT your children to wrath.
DISCIPLINE—especially harsh, out-of-touch-emotionally discipline—WITHOUT SUFFICIENT CLOSE RELATIONSHIP will virtually always result in REBELLION. That’s not a hard concept. Parents more or less instinctively know that.
But they don’t think in those terms. And most don’t know what else to do but yell louder or hit harder.
And maybe worse, THEY DO NOT PERSIST *SUFFICIENTLY* in searching for better solutions. There are tons of good books out now. But even James Dobson’s classic DARE TO DISCIPLINE is a good start.
HOW TO RAISE THINKING KIDS is another—though I think the video may be all that’s available, now.
But the research indicates that kids turn out OK IF
IF
IF
IF
IF
IF
IF
IF
they FELT LOVED by their parents.
All else fails by comparison.
Many parents get into ego driven, insecurity driven battles of the will over nothing. That communicates to the kids that parents pride is more important than the kid. That’s very destructive.
But I’m not eager to blame, per se. I’m interested in fixing what’s broken and moving on.
The parents in this situation have more hellish trauma in their laps, minds and hearts than they’ll work through in several lifetimes worth of prayer and pondering.
However, they may as well learn and help others to learn from their tragedy.
At the end of the movie Camelot . . . The king asks Merlin what can be done for being sad. Merlin says that the only thing for being sad is to learn something.
Let all of us learn something and help those around us to learn to be better parents, friends, family, surrogate big brothers and sisters [informatlly—not that org] . . .
If you are going to post that way, please don’t post to ALL. It’s ridiculous to try to read and I for one don’t have the patience or desire to do it.
Exactly Quix, exactly... Thank you for taking the time to write all of that out. I hope people will take it all to heart.