I like to stir the pot so I am going to try to stir it up again. I read all these posts blaming the parents and telling them to take responsibility. Now I am going to defend some parents; mine.
When I was in first grade, my Mom starting laughing at jokes I could not hear and talking to people I could not see. Can you guess what was happening?
To a six-year-old boy things were getting pretty weird, pretty fast. I remember tugging and tugging on my Mom's arm and trying to get her attention. She just wasn't there. I had been abandoned. Was that her fault?
My Mom would take us to several stores and buy literally thousands of dollars of clothes and things she had no money to buy from store clerks who tried desperately to talk her out of it. She would then stand around on a corner for hours until my Dad came to get us. The clerks would call my Dad and he would have to leave work to get us. We lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone else. They gracefully allowed my Dad to return the things Mom bought.
My Mom was gone for a year. My Dad was never prepared for this role. His own father died when my Dad was a teenager and so he had no role model to turn to. He was raised in a place and time where men were taught to take care of themselves and not ask others for help. He was raised in a time when women raised children and men brought home paychecks. He never played with us, he simply enforced the rules.
My Dad also suffered from chronic illness. He was in and out of hospitals sometimes for months at a time. He almost died on more than one occasion. I was thirteen during the most serious occurrence of his illness. The extended family housed me. I was passed around. I was only permitted to see my Dad once in four months. For much of this time, I lived in our house by myself. I was expected to keep the lawn mowed and the house cleaned. An uncle or my Dad's Mom would come by and check on me once in a while. My Mom was with my Dad, living near the hospital he was in. The hospital was in another state.
This left my sister and I large periods of unsupervised or at least under supervised time. Yes, we got real into trouble. To call us 'struggling' or 'troubled' would have been an understatement.
So, was my unhappy, sometimes violent, often lawbreaking, drinking, drug-taking, runaway, truant, out of control behavior my parents fault? They were not very good parents. But could they help it? Probably not.
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Over the past few days, my son (who is eight), finally learned to ride a bike. His Mom purchased this cool bike from Toys R Us for about 50 bucks. He managed to ride it without training wheels, but was struggling. I have him on the weekends. I picked him up Friday and he wanted to bike ride with me on the weekend, so I brought the bike. I took him to a bike path. He was riding, but he was not having a good time at all. He was stuggling. He couldn't turn well. He could not go up the slightest hill. He took it out on me and everyone else, including complete strangers. He threw around F bombs and 'idiots.' He would throw the bike down and kick it. He was blaming everyone and everything but himself. It was very embarasssing. It was also obvious to me, what this frustrated child needed. I stopped everything. I tossed both boy and bike into the car and went to my favorite bike store. I had them fit him to a proper bike in his size that he really liked. You see, the bike Mom bought looked like a Harley Davidson chopper complete with long fork, small front tire and pedals out in front of the rider. It looked cool, but was almost impossible for a beginner to ride. I purchased a 21 speed mountain style bike for him. It cost 300 bucks.
I drove boy and new bike back to the bike path. He took to his new bike like a fish to water. He rode seven miles non-stop and was gleefully saying hello to all passersby. He was saying, "weeeee.." down the hills. He was calling out the gear the he was using. He only took one spill and simply said, 'oops' got up and rode on. I have never seen him so proud or so happy.
When a kid misbehaves somtimes it is the parents, sometimes it is the child, sometimes it's just getting the right bike.
