Photoessay #2808 - Acting out kids

They're everywhere.

I attended a lovely dinner last evening.  A pot luck meeting of members of my geneaalogy class a few years back.  We hadn't met since spring; we usually just yack and yack about geneaology.  Like last night, a lively discussion about different kinds of dna tests complete with diagrams and lots of laughing.  Six women there last night.

Just across the Fremont bridge.  I go to that area all the time, I'm really thinking I need to move somewhere near the University.  I go there many times every single week.  Get a clue!

Anyway, and it wasn't me, somebody brought up how difficult their daughter was to raise.  You could tell that this mom had really been through it.  It wasn't the extreme nature of the daughter's behavior; it was how it had injured the mom.  And this mom always looks like she has everything under control.  Another volunteered that her son, who had Tourett's (sp) had also been very very hard; they had sent him to therapeutic boarding school for all of his high school years.  I didn't quite get a sense of how things were now.  A third member (not a parent) volunteered how she had a niece who everybody in the family feared who disrupted family gatherings frequently.

OK, that's 4 out of 6.  The other two parents said their kids had been challenging but not so bad.

I started talking about parent group and they all said they really could have used it.  Actually several still can.  Work with that niece to make it so she doesn't have so much power.

Now, not everybody is willing to do the parent group program.  It definitely stands at the fringes.  For awhile, the Board was looking to partner with some other organization but apparently decided, as I would think, that having conventional social work supervision would destroy the program.

Did I mention, the other night when I came home from the weekly meeting. because I didn't feel so great?  When I got there for the tail-end of the monthly pot luck, it looked like a holiday party.  40 people; the place was jumping.  Very high energy.

One important aspect; as parents, we are told by the culture around us that we should do everything for our children's benefit.  That we are to discount abuse to ourselves.  Yet we should not allow ourselves to be abused and we need to teach our children that others will also not tolerate their behavior.

Picture taken from a 2009 BBC story, used without permission.