Parenting Matters: When neglect leads to death of someone else, then we take notice

[Katzndogz]

With some of these children they are just too broken to be fixed by optimistic parenting. Their brains are wired differently.

 

[EverCurious]

There is some truth to that as well, certainly there are... "mutations" in the wiring (I have "alternate" brain wiring myself)

I fully agree that killers usually have a few screws loose... If not all of them heh

 

[Granny]

I understand what you're saying EverCurious. I refuse to view myself as a victim ... but rather a survivor. I was an unwanted child, period. I will never know the real reason why I was put in an orphanage because anyone who could tell me has died. As badly as we were treated in the orphanage I was in - I was happier there than I was with my mother. When circumstances put me back with her, my life became a living hell and I was suicidal as a teenager. My mother literally hated me and never let me forget it. My "rebellion" was very passive - I knew in my heart that I was a good kid - and I knew I had to prove to myself and the rest of the world (as it were) that I was a good person -it drove me to excel to the best of my abilities at everything I tried. It paid off. I didn't want my children to have the life I had so I tried to do the opposite of what my mother did. I have great children and I'm very proud of them.

Even though my mother and I had been completely estranged for some 17-18 years before she died, had I known she was sick I would have done something - I don't know what - to try to help her. History will never erase that she was my biological mother. She kept her shit up all those years trying to eradicate my existence even trying to turn my children against me. When I was told to stay away and not to show up at her funeral, I immediately absolved myself of any guilt ... that I was merely complying with her wishes. I didn't go to her funeral, I have never gone to her grave site, and she had been 6 feet under for 2 years or more before I stopped being afraid of her.

On the other hand, I was about 22-23 years old when I finally found my Dad - and I found the parent who loved me. He had dealt with the situation all those years by telling himself that I had died ... his beautiful brown-eyed blonde daughter had died. It was all over money - the only thing she ever loved - that, and if I had been raised by him ["you'da been raised a Catholic"]. Maybe I would have been - but I probably would have had a good education and been bilingual English/Polish in the bargain because he and his family spoke English in public and Polish in the home. I had a few good years with my Daddy before he died and his death was just emotionally horrendous for me. I did right by him and made sure he had a decent Catholic burial because he had no one left except me.

People CAN overcome bad circumstances if they want to - but they have to want to.

 

[Katzndogz]

There are some people so damaged and part of it might be physical abnormality, that they can't want to.

I had some dire circumstances with my crazy mother and crazier step father. They believed they truly loved me and were truly doing what was best. It took a tremendous effort to overcome the damage they did. Of course, I never did. I just made it better.

I met my biological Dad when I was 50. My son found him. He loved me. He loved a stranger. I did not go to his funeral. It was a full military funeral based on his service in WWII. I'm sure it was beautiful.

 

[Katzndogz]

As i have thought about my dad, I wondered. My half brother married a black girl. My dad disowned him and never considered his grandson as family. My dad thought my brother should not have married out of his race. But, as my 50 year old self told my dad "you married out of your race! How was that different when you married a white woman " Maybe the old man didn't want a half breed child to remind him of his own transgressions.

Ceetainly my mother's family didn't appreciate a half indian. My aunt Ann wouldn't even allow me in her house!

We all have burdens to overcome.

 

[Granny]

So you know what can happen ... and you made it better for your children. That's good on you. That's the point of emilynghiem's OP. Good parenting. Child abuse, neglect, and failure to nurture crosses all racial and financial demographics - there are no barriers in this matter. The memories are going to be there, yes; the personal pain is going to be there, yes. But a way needs to be found to turn the memories and the pain around into something good.

So, as laid out in the OP, there was a throw away kid living in the streets who wanted his name to be known (which is just another way of saying he wanted someone to know he existed), he made a very bad decision that will give him his "15 minutes of fame" in a courtroom and then be forgotten ... but Haruka's name and beautiful life will, no matter how short and brutally taken away, will be remembered always.

 

[Granny]

As an after thought, Tipsy, there's a very beautiful book you might want to consider. It's a very thin book called The Prophet by a Lebanese poet named Kahlil Gibran. It pretty much covers almost everything in life. I've had my copy for decades - it's my favorite book. I can just read one poem about something that I have on my mind and every time I read it, I can get something new out of it.

 

[EverCurious]

By the same token though, such things happen in bio-families too. My husband's father is dying of cancer, like he won't make the year, yet my husband won't speak to him, nor his father to him. His folks were planning to divorce but his mom became pregnant with him, his Dad blames him for "ruining his life" (and I've actually heard the man say this, at our wedding no less.) His mother is a "traditional" woman who basically just ignores it all happened out of idk loyalty to her husband or something - I don't get it honestly. His Dad's a drunk, abusive, rude, unemotional... I tell my husband he hasn't "belonged" to his father since he was 16 and moved out to join the army. Its fucked up that this /still/ effects my husband, he's 45... Parental abuse doesn't ever go away, it permanently scars kids emotionally. Tragic I suppose, but on the other hand, it also makes these same kids stronger, I think in most cases, so is it "the worst thing in the world"? I'm not so sure, my husband would not be who he is today without it and he's a good man, an asshole at times for sure, but its a "good intentioned" asshole-ness that I can understand, and even grudgingly respect.

It actually makes me laugh at times, he's very much like my father (actually my step-father, but he raised me so I call him father) when I was growing up I couldn't wait to get away from my father, couldn't wait to "escape" the "militaristic" environment (father's a general.) I married my HS sweetheart, he was a sheep, good man, great father (we had two kids then got fixed and I'll never regret that choice.) Yet I find myself more... content, more in love, with my husband even with all his stupid "military" shit. I grew up basically, realized that my father was teaching me things that school doesn't, things that don't seem to matter but they create a pattern of thinking. I thought my father was abusive, but in reality he was doing what was best for me. The problem with today's society is that these kids never grow up and reflect on the lessons well meaning folks tried to teach them, they only "rebel" they only "fight the man" and that kind of "thinking" is not conductive to having a "successful" life - however one wishes to define success.

 

[Granny]

I get that. Your husband knew from the get-go that he was an unwanted child and his father never let him forget it. Perhaps his "militaristic" ways are a subconscious manifestation of his desire to keep the chaos of his childhood out of the home he has made with you and your children.

 

[Katzndogz]

As an after thought, Tipsy, there's a very beautiful book you might want to consider. It's a very thin book called The Prophet by a Lebanese poet named Kahlil Gibran. It pretty much covers almost everything in life. I've had my copy for decades - it's my favorite book. I can just read one poem about something that I have on my mind and every time I read it, I can get something new out of it.

I don't read poetry. I find it insipid.

Identify the violent brain damaged as children and remove them. For life.