Do as I say because I know best - btw - who are you?

At a particularly painful and frustrating point in my life someone who cared for me pointed out the obvious. He insisted that I was contributing to my own misery because I assumed people I cared about shared my unique values, my work ethic, my goals, my sense of right and wrong and my spiritual beliefs. Until I faced reality and conducted myself accordingly, he insisted that I couldn’t possibly make good decisions.

I think he was right.

A lot of my clients construct fanciful theories as to why a certain family member does what he or she does. More often than not, it is a house of cards constructed to bolster and protect their image of that person. “He cheats on me because … she steals my money because… he is angry and violent because… he uses drugs because… she won’t hold a job because…” They get so caught up in the “because” that they overlook that he cheats, she steals, he is violent, he uses, she won’t work. While trying desperately to figure out WHY this person is making their life (and the lives of their children) so miserable, they remain in the situation and allow the misery and insanity to continue. In the name of saving a relationship, they try to “fix” the person by appointing themselves as the healer of whatever it is that they think caused it in the first place.

Good luck with that.

A big part of what I do is to try to obtain services for children and families in trouble. Home-based counseling, individual therapy, substance abuse treatment, tutoring, financial help with mental health and medical treatment, anger management, intensive probation, outreach services, special education assistance, psychological evaluations, parenting classes, medication evaluations, psychosocial evaluations, psychosexual evaluations, mental health evaluations… I could go on and on. Sometimes it helps, frequently it doesn’t. You do the best you can and keep plugging.

Each case is different and finding the right services calls for an analysis of each different situation, often with limited success because there is only so many things you CAN do. We don’t have enough places for pregnant teenagers. In some nearby counties we don’t have anyplace to send kids at odds with their families pending trials on charges of domestic assault and battery except for detention – so there they sit. We frequently have single parents who don’t work or who only work sporadically. We have single mothers with multiple children and multiple fathers, few of whom are involved. We have exhausted single mothers who rely on the current man in their life to pay the bills, notwithstanding that he hates her children; they hate him; he is violent; or he is looking at her daughter a little too intensely. We have families with absolutely no notion of how their child is doing in school, who don’t “get” that homework (or school attendance) is important. We have families that allow their eleven year olds to have unmonitored Myspace pages with “sexy baby” as a screen name. We have children allowed to stay up all night and sleep through school the next day. We have children who terrorize their parents, confiscate their paychecks and set the rules for the house. None of these scenarios is uncommon.

“All the kids do it.”
“It doesn’t matter what I say – he is a teenager and is going to do it anyway.”
“It’s just pot.”
“I’d rather her have sex with her boyfriend at home where I know she is using birth control.” (yes, I’ve heard this and variations of this a lot)

Which leads me to the notion that prompted this post. I listen to politicians pontificate about fixing our social problems. Many have a decidedly holier than thou demeanor towards anyone who disagrees with their theories and programs. I always wonder how many have actually sat down, day in and day out, and dealt with real people in poverty and crisis. Have they simply read other people’s theories as to why things are the way they are? Margaret Mead had some great ideas – check there. Have they been provided statistics? What statistics? Do they represent organizations that provide services?

I wonder what they really know about the families that find themselves in trouble? Do they understand that they arrive at the courthouse, for example, from different roads? Have they sat across from people in jail and listened to what they have to say about their opinion of the system, their families and society in general? Have they seen grandparents desperately trying to provide stability to their grandchildren when the parent won’t? Have they seen grandmothers beaten by gang member grandchildren? Have they talked to juvenile probation officers who are on the front lines of budding delinquent behavior and are trying their best to turn the tide? Have they seen the exhaustion on a young mother’s face who is working two jobs when the father took off as soon as he learned she was pregnant? Have they seen the pain in the faces of families worn out and confused that their adult child made the choices he/she made? Have they seen the misery in the face of a black man who married his high school sweetheart, built a business, had four children, goes to church and pays his taxes, whose youngest son is a member of a gang and is now facing serious criminal charges? (I’ve seen variations of this many, many times).

I guess all I’m saying is that I would have more respect for the opinions of someone who has theories for fixing social problems if I had the slightest confidence that they reached that opinion based on reality rather than their own theory of why people do what they do. Labeling others as uncaring or noncompassionate when they disagree is the height of arrogance, in my opinion. In doing so, they tell me that they don't really get it. They have no idea how heartbreaking it is to try to find some wisdom, some solution, some advice to give these hurting families.

Are politicians who are given "good" information or who have a history of being on the cutting edge of policy making in a position to claim that they have some special insight and morality that makes their judgement more compassionate and effective? Stop and think about how you would feel if YOUR child was facing a bad situation in court and the guardian ad litem waltzed in with all the answers – yet had never once sat down and spoken to your child or your family, first. Now think about how you would feel if that GAL not only didn’t speak to YOUR family, but had never even dealt one-on- one with other families in any significant manner – he or she had relied upon what was read, what was reported, or what he or she brought to the table based upon his/her family experience, education and whatever other personal opinions he/she had, which could come from anywhere.

I guess my point is that I find is shocking that anyone could claim to somehow have some special insight into what is best for multitudes of anonymous others when the ones who actually work with them, day in and day out, lose sleep, agonize and pray over what is right and what will work for individual cases.

Off to quilt.

photo - Evelyn after she ate the chocolate covered cordials - added just to have a picture, today