Parents’ Tough Love Forges Hope for New Year
It started with dope, or marijuana, when the brothers were 12 or 14. That was then.
Now they’re 20 and 22. At home. Doing nothing, or mostly nothing. “Stuck at 12,” says their mother, “but doing crank,” or methamphetamine, as well as pot.
On a good day, the brothers toss a football around on the front lawn.
On a bad day, like the one that happened last week, the brothers are hopped up, paranoid, speaking nonsense, being delusional. From that state they descend into a torpor and sleep for days.
When they do rise, they act so strange that their mother doesn’t know what to do. They lie. They alibi. They flip out. They make references to being shamans who, with the aid of drugs, get in touch with the Earth and their surroundings.
“Since Christmas I’ve been in crisis,” their mother says. “I have had to persuade the neighbors that they are not dangerous.”
*
Welcome to the holiday meeting of Tough Love, a group of parents who, somewhere along the way, have watched one or more of their children self-destruct. Tough Love’s catchwords for the deeds of self-destruction are “acting out.” There could hardly be a larger euphemism.
Acting out means, variously, assault, suicide, theft, threat, running away and any other thing an adolescent might do to recklessly fight back against the world. The child is endangered. So is everyone else.
The parent comes to Tough Love because nothing has worked. Reason fails. Threats fail. Grounding fails. Warm, fuzzy I’m-OK-you’re-OK love fails. Straight-ahead, unconditional love fails. Church fails. Schools fail. Siblings fail. Mental health agencies fail. Hospital emergency rooms fail. Everybody fails.
Yet the child succeeds magnificently in his or her mission: A complete detachment that drives things out beyond reach.
“I asked my kid for one thing that was good in a given week, he said ‘nothing,’ ” a Tough Love parent explains to the group.
“Then I asked him for one thing that was bad in the same week, and he said, ‘nothing.’ Then I ask him for something he’d like to change in the house or family or his life--anything that he’d like to change that week to make things better, and he said, ‘Like what?’ ”
Seated next to the woman with the two sons is a woman who, for the first time, chose not to purchase Christmas gifts for her stepdaughter. The stepdaughter had acted out in so many unspecified but harrowing ways that the woman and her husband drove her to Utah to commit her to a lock-down rehab institution. They raised the $30,000 to pay for it by taking a second mortgage on their home. Withholding Christmas gifts was a get-tough attempt at clearly saying: Gifts are earned, gifts are about respect and love, gifts are about decency and kindness.
“She called home for the first time,” the woman reports, with some glee. “It was a fairly good chat.”
This compares favorably to another couple who also put their child in a Utah lock-down. It seems their son was fine until his freshman year in high school. That’s when he started drinking, smoking dope, doing crank, hanging out with a menacing gang of friends.
The only thing he wanted to do, his mother says, “was hang with his friends, get high, do nothing.” This couple visited their son over the holidays and were delighted to see him healthy and clear of mind. They were struck at how much closer they felt to him in a faraway lockup. They also did not pursue a line of conversation in which the son did assert his right to choose his friends.
“I told him that we had a say in that,” said the mother, “and left it at that because I didn’t want us to fight.”
*
Not all Tough Love kids are under lock and key, of course. Most of the parents at this meeting are going home to deal straight-on with their problem kids.
Like the woman whose son is verbally abusive, has his dental allowance earmarked for marijuana purchases, and who was declined all Christmas gifts this year--not only from his parents but his siblings. Though a house rule is posted that the family car may not be used without permission, this young man drove off after last week’s verbal battle.
“Did you call the cops?” asks a fellow Tough Love parent. No.
“Is he on your insurance policy?” asks another. No.
“Are you aware that if he crashed and killed someone, your car is stolen and you are liable?” Again, no.
Everyone looks around in silence. And then, as if in chorus, three people say it: “The Club.” Indeed, this woman will purchase The Club and make it impossible for her son to steal her car.
It may seem a tad barbaric, The Club. But it’s all in love. Any parent who truly cares about her family is entitled to do what it takes to try and bring about a better New Year.
