Tuesday, May 21, 2013

“It’s considered neglect...”

 A mom called me yesterday to say she found out her 16 year old son was smoking pot in their house and when confronted, got mad and was threatening to run away.  She wanted to know what to do.  Personally, if it had been my son, I would have said, “fine, leave”.  However, I told her I wanted to check with someone and would call her back.  Since I get referrals from probation officers, I called one of them and asked his opinion.  He said that if a kid wants to leave, a parent cannot generally, keep him from leaving.  However, if that kid runs away, the parent is now responsible for reporting the missing kid, otherwise, it’s considered neglect.


This brings up soooo…. many thoughts.  This is the same mother who has not reported violence that should have been reported.  To me this is kid who has not matured past the “ME…ME…ME” stage.  
That really is a stage, but the normal age range is 0-4 years old.  

Our job as parents is “to grow our kids / to mature our kids”.  I know…that doesn’t make sense, but what I’m trying to say is that it is our job to help them progress through these stages (see below).  When a baby is hungry and cries, he screams until you come running with the bottle or whatever he wants.  The screaming is intolerable and we do whatever it takes to get them to stop.  A child in this stage in incapable of thinking about  anyone else's needs but his own.  He doesn't care if you are tired, if you are hungry, if you are sick, if his brother is humgry, etc.  He doesn't stop until he gets what he wants...and that's OK.....at this stage....

The mother of this kid told me that when the son is having a fit, (except in this case it’s camouflaged as extreme anger), the father tells her to give him what he wants “can’t you see how upset he is?”  

Last week, the cover of Time Magazine caught my eye.  I have not read the article, but I'm not sure how a child who is not capable of thinking of others' needs is going to "save us all".  


In my classes, we learn about the different stages and how to move through each stage.

SHARING IS CARING




Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)