<p>Why are the parents of troubled kids so often in denial? They believe the repeated lies kids tell who get caught in situation after situation. They coddle and keep these kids from facing real consequences. Teachers, coaches, friends warn them, but they think they know better. Why?</p>
<p>You could get the answer by reversing your question. Disengaged, coddling, non-parental parents make for difficult children. Children learn to behave by having expectations, consistent consequences, etc, from their families. They learn to take accountability from parents modeling this and expecting it.</p>
<p>Don’t flame me; I realize that it is more complicated than that-- there are always the families of five kids with one snarky kid & four nice kids… And there are always kids with really devoted parents whose biochemistry is off or who have suffered a trauma. But these are the exceptions not the rule.</p>
<p>In the aggregate, if you think of the families you know-- the apple generally does not fall far from the tree.</p>
<p>I agree SBmom. Are we going to be flamed? When you see troubled kids, especially more than one in a family, you can usually look to the parents to understand why (yes, there are exceptions!). Parents who believe their little darlings need to be treated gingerly and ask gently why they feel free to mess up repeatedly. Parents who can relate because they had run ins as kids and their patents didn’t make a big deal over it! Don’t get me started…Some religons make people take marriage classes, why don’t they insist on parenting classes?</p>
<p>Many parents are in denial. Not just those with troubled kids either. I have seen kids who have “fooled” everyone until they get caught doing something and it becomes clear that they have been doing such misdeeds for years. One young man who was known as a model student by school, coaches, parents, etc was plaguerizing papers and stealing money from others for years. It did not come to light until he was caught spectacularly on both counts . His fellow student all knew, but most parents thought that the comments were sour grapes until the problem was out in the open. </p>
<p>It’s hard to step out of one’s own world and views and look hard at your own children. I have a blended family, and I have more trouble assessing my birth children than the adopted and foster kids. Not because I love them anymore, but I knew that my birth children had every bit of love, care, nurturing, even before they were born, whereas the other kids came with some real issues to overcome. So my expectations were formed accordingly.When we first moved to NY and I was looking at school alternatives for my brood, my brother who works at one of the top NYC private schools introduced me to someone in the elite admissions business. He has an admirable record in placing “his” kids and was going through the cutthroat preschool placement process in NYC himself with his 3 year old who came to play with my youngest who was the same age. Well, his kid was a brat. A very, well trained, probably very bright brat. With some definite behavioural issues. Now this “expert” was able to assess my kids right down to the detail, and I have to say he was right on though I disagreed with some of suggestions (still I was glad to get them as alternatives). I was ever so grateful for the info he gave me; in a couple of hours I had the lowdown on the school scene that would have taken me a couple of years to get. But he was pulling every string he had to put his kid in a top school; and the kid did get into a number of them–yes, connection do count. In fact, I think we overlook the most important connections of all which is the world that the adcoms live in. That can trump knowing a trustee at a school, or even the president of the school, believe me. Well, this kid got into a number of NY’s finest and most selective school when it was very clear that he had some serious behavioural issues, and I don’t mean little ones. My little one who was a bit behind a that time was a far stronger candidate than that brat. So this specialist in elite school puts his kid in one of the best-- and now 4 years later, the kid has been kicked out of 3 schools and they are finally trying to address the problem. So it is not just the parent who was blind there. His blindness was supported by one of the most selective and thorough systems I know.</p>
<p>Although with older kids I think that parents just get tired. I know mine are wearing me out. Sometimes, I want to just let them get into trouble and let momentum take over, as I have none. My senior in highschool really just about put me over the edge last year, and I was ready to give up. Let him get into trouble. Let him get others into trouble. It was really a lot easier to just believe him than to track down what is going on. After all I have sunk thousands of dollars and years of acting lessons to get him this point where he is the most convincing, polished liar I have ever seen. And I am his mother who knows him and I have been around the block with two other troublemakers, and I still think he is about as good as they get. And what he was doing was no different than what kids have been doing for years at that age, raising cain and causing mischief. Believe me, I was tempted. And I see many parents succumbing to this. Actually most kids do get through this stage without permanent damage, but in this case, I was not willing to take the chance.</p>
<p>I have been spending time with a troubled 14 year old through the Big Sister program. Watching her family has been an education. Of course she lies, cheats and steals, her whole family does. They think it’s totally normal, everyone does it. Yet they look you straight in the eye and lament that the daughter isn’t truthful with them or well behaved at school. Thet really don’t seem to understand why.</p>
<p>That certainly is an issue, Jazzpiano. I have found that I am late everywhere since I am aware that my driving habits can influence future and current new drivers, and have to slow down. I am no speed demon–great driving record, but I do tend to go with the flow of traffic as I am always in a hurry. But with kids…well, at least that is the theory. I have a feeling that even with restraint, they will tend to leadfoots.</p>
<p>I do volunteer teaching at our state’s youth correctional facility. Most of these kids (surprise) have substance abuse problems. One kid told me he was not going back to that, so to help him strategize, I asked him if he had some different friends he could hang with when he got out - ie, ones not into dope, etc. He replied “Well, my mom says she’s going to stop.” 'Nuf said.</p>
<p>I work in a middle school and see parents in denial pretty regularly. Actually, I think most parents hold their kids accountable, but the ones who don’t are in for some big problems down the road.</p>
<p>I have given this a lot of thought and in some cases I think that the parents who are most likely to blame everyone else but the kids are parents whose self esteem is based on their kid. Subconciously - “If my kid misbehaves, that must mean I am a bad parent. Since I don’t want to be a bad parent, it must be other reason why my kid has a problem.” So it is the school’s fault or the police departments or the mean neighbor next door or the other kids, etc. Is some ways, it is the flip side of parents that we occassionally see here on CC. These are the parents who feel validated by how good their kids are. Again, subconciously - “If my kid gets accepted to a premiere college, it shows everyone what a great parent I am.” So I think there is a group of parents whose kids are problems partly because the parents are overinvested in them, not underinvested. </p>
<p>The second main group I see are the parents who love their kids but are so overwhelmed with their own issues that they don’t see what is happening. The kids are left to their own devices way too much.</p>
<p>And I see another group who tries as much as they can, but they just have poor parenting skills. Unfortunately, they often don’t see that they have poor skills so don’t take action to try and change how they parent.</p>
<p>The most frustrating group are the no-shows, who don’t really care. These are the kids that I feel the worst for. Fortunately, I don’t have too many of them for they are the ones who tear my heart out.</p>
<p>One more group: the divorced parents who are both competing to be the “favorite” and just indulge, indulge, indulge. Couple this with little communication between homes (so kid can tell either parent he did his homework at the other parent’s house) and you have kids getting away with all sorts of BS.</p>
<p>Do you think anyone actually know they are a bad parent? I often wonder what parent’s of kids who always get in trouble think. Just bad luck in birthing badly behaved kids?</p>
<p>Kirmum: Maybe not, but maybe there is hope when the kid sees that they are…</p>
<p>For example, last year, a then-junior in high school friend of my D’s realized he had to get out of his home…one of his parents was a substance-abuser, his other was an “enabler” and refused to see the problem. The abuse turned physical and he left. Up to that time, this kid had struggled terribly with school…was in real danger of not graduating HS. We offered him a home a little over a year ago and he is now on schedule to graduate, has auditioned at a local college theater program (affiliated with an excellent school and with a two-year community college which he can get into to “catch up”), and has generally done the proverbial “turn your life around” thing. </p>
<p>Unfortunately (for them AND for him), his parents are still blind. They pretty much have nothing to do with him and it still breaks his heart. But he keeps on going!!!</p>
<p>BTW, I have 3 “other” kids, and my youngest is a senior also this year. All three have been very accepting and supportive of their new “brother”. And (with their good grades and relatively “easy” family life), I think they are in many ways in awe of him.</p>
<p>So, there is hope. We all just need to extend a hand when we can…</p>
<p>shennie - very thought-provoking. You really have insights into this.</p>
<p>kirmum - I have seen what you are referring to, way too close to home. In this case, a mother found “love” (it did turn out to be that, but that is beside the point) on the Internet and left her H and pre-teen S for new squeeze. And when I say left, I mean picked up and moved over 500 miles away. She truly believed that all was ok because “S and I have a great relationship. We talk all the time.” Totally clueless about the abandonment on so many dimensions because she firmly believed she was a good parent who “communicated” with her S and he “understood.” An 11-year old boy understand his mother taking off???!!? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>
“Dr. Phil” is on my other screen as I write (okay, I admit it, I watch him sometimes). A line he just spoke is so apropos of what we are discussing here:</p>
<p>"It takes a thousand ‘atta boys’ to make up for one ‘you’re no good’ that a child suffered growing up. </p>
<p>So true, and (my corollary from watching “my boys” at the Youth Center and my young relative): we have to keep on with our ‘atta boys’ regardless of whether we see results, because maybe we are only the 200th and 800 more are still needed.</p>
<p>Not buying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, if the kid lies, the parents must be liars. I know plenty of families where the parents are straight arrow decent but one or more of the kids goes off the rails. Mental illness is a huge curve ball, IMHO.</p>
<p>The Perfect Parent producing the Perfect Child is a myth. We’re human. Only human. Even those who sit in harsh judgement are human, prone to huge miscalculation.</p>
<p>Pardon my short temper on this subject, but I spent 12 years in Catholic schools ‘learning’ to imitate a perfect being and it taught me that the pursuit of perfection is sheer folly.</p>
<p>To top it off, I finished reading the new deKooning biography. deKooning was a deeply deeply flawed human being. He was so far from the CC ideal–his mother would be flamed if she posted a story about his behavior. And yet…and yet…the brilliance of the man, the mastery of the craft. He was a gift to mankind.</p>
<p>I do some work at an inner city school where the famiies have serious problems, and yes, it does follow that the kids bear the brunt of the fallout. The institutuion many of the kids end up is jail, not college. Anything other than community college is unrealistic for most of them, and just getting the idea of college as a possibility later on is a giant step. The parents are a big part of the problem here, and any kid who makes it out of this environment is truly special. </p>
<p>But there are a number of kids who come from families where the efforts have been to keep it straight. And some of those kids, too get into trouble. My kids have wreaked havoc on us, and it has really been difficult to keep them in line at times. And yet in some ways we are lucky, in that so far there has not been permanent damage. Every year, whereever I live, some kid has a fatal car accident or causes one. Local papers are rife with out of control parties, underage drinking, pot, you name it. One of the scariest incident I knew about that occurred a number of years ago happened when a set of parents went to Florida for a week business/pleasure jaunt leaving teenaged son with grandmom. Well, son sneaked out of the house when grandma fell asleep, had friends drive him to the airport where he found the dad’s car. With the spare keys that he had filched, he drove the thing back home. For the entire week he drove the car, usually filled with classmates. He was ony just 16, and did not yet have a license. And his classmates all knew this. It was a big fun joke, until he crashed the car. I believe two out of three of them died with the third kid in the car seriously injured. Bad enough. But upon investigating what happened, the police and school discovered that nearly 100 kids had been in that car with that driver in that week, knowing that he had no license and how the car was obtained. They had been joyriding everywhere, and actually the police were looking for the car as there had been complaints about a crazy driver with a car full of kids driving dangerously in the area. Any number of those kids could have been in the car when it crashed. Kid was in band, and every band member had taken a turn. Plus they were sneaking out on school nights doing all kinds of things. Apparently the entire spree was documented on the computer, don’t remember how, it was before xanga and live journal, I think, or many be not. But the community was quite shaken when this occurred. </p>
<p>It is a tough climb up the ladder to adulthood but a quick slide down, and it only take an instant to make that decision to end up rock bottom. And no kid or family is exempt. Any parent who is not aware of this, is in denial. Not saying every kid will take the slide, just saying he could regardless of upbringing, values, etc. And bad luck could make the mistake in judgement, the chance taken into a catastrophe.</p>
<p>cheers, you must have been skimming because I mentioned the exceptions of mental illness and the cases where nice parents have a kid go wrong for no apparent reason.</p>
<p>The OP was talking about why the parents of rotten kids are often in denial. We were talking about how that sort of parent (the permanently in denial “my kid is perfect” type) often sets the kid up for a problem. Great parents with screwed up kids are not typically in denial about it.</p>
<p>Women like Jamimom, Churchmom, and my cousin, who take in othr kids with problems, are just so admirable to me. I am a single mom with one kid, so I had it ever so easy. Now I’m about to move in with someone with 2 more normal kids, so I’ll get a taste of just how hard parenting can be.</p>
<p>Insomniac here. Woke in middle of night, so Heck, before going back to sleep, might as well reply!</p>
<p>Zagat, I think your there is a variety of reasons for parental denial. (1) I think in some cases, the parents subconsciously know that something’s not right, but feel overwhelmed when it comes to remedy, and/or guilty that they haven’t been singlehandedly able to correct the problem(s); the self-protective reaction to that can be denial; (2) parents who themselves were raised in a family whose dynamics were defined by denial, tend to pass that dyamic long in their own formed families; (3) In the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” dep’t, some parents were indulged themselves as children, therefore have no pattern of child-rearing save what was given to <em>them</em>; (4) what reinforces that last reality, is being in a GROUP of parents & kids (e.g., a class in a school) where most of the parents (as children) were indulged, & that is currently being passed along to progeny; This pattern I fought all during my younger D’s 9 previously elem. years, & unluckily now in her freshman year in H.S. [She tells me she is the “least spoiled” of all the freshmen; I believe it.]</p>
<p>(To shorten the above, #(3) is cluelessness, #(4) is conformity/GroupThink.)</p>
<p>But the Fifth possibility is parental pathology, which takes a larger role than perhaps any of us tend to believe. We know of a family in which at least one of the major figures manifests Narcissistic Personality Disorder; the way this gets translated in child-rearing is that one of the children is artificially imbued with superhuman, superior traits which no classmate of the child’s can supposedly equal, let alone surpass. In this case, the <em>result</em> of the parental behavior is denial, rather than the cause – but the consequences end up being the same. [When “Susie” “under”-performs, giant excuses & rationales follow, creating elaborate reasons why she “would have” gotten first place, or whatever, if such-and-such an event hadn’t happened, etc.] Said student will enter college with absolutely no realistic self-image – which is dangerous, in my view.</p>
<p>Finally, Sixth but not least, I think that some of the denial to which you refer is indirectly fallout from our hurried parental lifestyles. There is so much less “family time” (slower, considered, interactive, observant) than “when I was a kid.” In many cases, I’ll bet that the Denial is “genuine,” in that the parents aren’t around enough, nor interactive enough, to observe what is really going on with their kids.</p>
<p>End of rant.
Sleeptime now.</p>
<p>Epiphany posted: “parents who themselves were raised in a family whose dynamics were defined by denial tend to pass that dynamic along in their own formed families.”</p>
<p>Epiphany, your screen name is very appropriate. That sentence was a “lightbulb moment” for me. (My family of origin had plenty of denial issues.) </p>
<p>My nephew is one of those problem kids with parents in denial. My sister is a classic “helicopter mom,” constantly fixing things and trying to manipulate the world for her sons. Her oldest is 20 and on a downhill slide: driver’s license taken away for too many speeding tickets, pot found in his car (“belongs to a friend”), transferred to a much easier college nearer to high school friends (several of whom are major party people), going out for lots of quick trips at night (“to the grocery store”), serving alcohol to friends late at night right at home in the kitchen after parents are asleep. He is getting his younger brother involved in all this as well. We expect he will be arrested for DUI or selling or possession and then finally his parents will have to wake up. It is sad to see developing in your own family. He is a very bright guy who has been given way too much of everything under the sun. </p>
<p>This is a fascinating thread.</p>
<p>Epiphany - your “rant” was actually very well-considered and enlightening. Would that all of our insomniac thoughts were as valuable (lol).</p>