This is a thinky post related to what happens when parents make bad decisions about who they trust with their children, and why they trust those people. So, watch out! For some of you parents, it may be a bit too scary/stressy to read. Or, maybe you are deeply thinking about this topic and are interested.
My sister’s nanny has a 6 year old boy who has been suspended from school multiple times for “violence” and “rebellion”. I think we can all agree that a 6 year old boy should not be suspended from school, and the teacher of a bunch of 6 year olds should be better able to handle some minor talking back and wriggles instead of just constant suspensions (bonus info, 20% of the children at this elementary school have been suspended at some point versus 2% in a neighboring school district). The point of this story is that the Mom of the 6 year old, a single parent with few monetary resources, dug in and did everything she could to fight for her son, eventually getting the school district to move him to a different classroom with a better teacher after going to a child psychologist, investigating laws, doing all kinds of things because she KNEW her son was a sweet little boy and he deserved to be allowed to stay in school. And now he gets to go back to school and the school has to actually help him instead of calling him a “bad kid” and sending him away,
The fact that this little boy is 6 makes it feel different than if he was 16. But, is it really? A parent has a choice in this situation to trust their instincts about their child and fight against everyone in “authority” who is telling them something different. When your child is 6, it seems so unlikely that there could be anything about your child you do not know, that some outsider could somehow see something different. But as they get older, it gets easier.
When I was teaching Sunday School, my kids were 8 to 12. And wow, you could see that moment the mask came down around age 12. To go from every thought and feeling being visible on their faces, to this sudden struggle to keep things inside was shocking. And a little scary, how could I tell if you were upset today? Or interested in the lesson? Or wanting to talk to me about something? But then, I did know these kids. I’d seen them back when they were too young to have masks. And if I just trusted what I already knew of them, I could figure it out, mostly.
This is just seeing kids for an hour once a week. I can imagine the constant questioning if you are with these kids every day as their parents. Sometimes you are so sure it is still the same child with the clear easily readable emotions you’ve always known, and then PHOOM the mask comes down and you have no idea what is happening. When do you start saying to yourself “I don’t really know my own child, someone else knows them better”? Do you ever start saying that?
I’m thinking about this again because I just started listening to a podcast about a “wilderness camp” that killed kids. As I’ve gone on my whole true crime binge, I’ve heard lots of variations of the “my teenager is talking back, taking drugs, sneaking out, I can’t handle it, I’m sending him away” story. And the sad thing is, there are SO MANY variations of this. There’s a hippie commune version, there’s a remote expensive private school in Maine version, there’s the foster care system version, there’s the Scientology version, and in America in the 90s there were lots and lots of “wilderness camp” versions of the same thing. What is new to me in this podcast is that the parents were not sending their children away as “punishment”. One family, their daughter was deeply depressed. Another, their son just didn’t seem to have confidence. Both of them were sold this “happy happy” vision of the camp, they wanted their kids to have a great fun experience over the summer and then come home. And they take full responsibility for making this choice to trust strangers with their children, even if they thought it was the “right” thing, even if it seemed best at the time, even though they could use l kinds of excuses.
The other version of this story, which I have heard again and again, is that a teenager was acting out, the parents decided to send them away to be “fixed” by these experts who promised they could “fix” them, and then refused to believe or help their children when their children tried to say what was happening. And in the worst instances, to this day they refuse to take responsibility for what they did.
(Kathy Hilton, for instance, is shockingly unwilling to even listen to what her daughter went through, even though Paris is now a public face and lobbyist for reform in troubled teen facilities. Just, LISTEN TO YOUR DAUGHTER AND SAY “I’m sorry, I was wrong”. How hard can that be?)
On the other hand, if you think worst case scenario about every bad decision, how can you ever raise a child? Like, safe sleeping positions for babies. It’s changed I don’t even know how many times over the past decades. But as a parent you still have to decide which theory you follow and trust that it is right even though you know in another 5 years people may decide it is wrong again.
(This is a stock image of “baby sleeping” look how much is wrong with it! The theories have changed so fast, the stock images haven’t even caught up)
To tie this back to India for a second, let’s talk Forced Marriages. We’ve had this discussion before, I don’t mean “arranged marriages”, that is something totally different. I mean forced, I mean when your child (male or female) comes to you and says “I don’t want this” and you tell them “I know better than you, I am going to force you to do it”. On the one hand, it’s a cultural tradition going back thousands of years, it’s something all of society is telling you is the right thing to do, it’s something you have plenty of reasons to think is the right thing to do. But is that an acceptable excuse? If not, what makes the difference? When does it become not okay for a parent to do something to their child even if “everyone” says it is the right thing? And when is it okay?
