Thursday, January 17, 2013

Like a Knife in My Heart


The below is a facebook conversation from last week that nearly brought me to my knees.  I haven't cried about Carolyn, or my failings as a parent in quite a while and this just got me where it hurts.  I shouldn't have commented, I know it, but I couldn't help it.


My job makes me overly aware of how quickly good kids from good families can be swept into a culture of drugs and crime, just starting with marijuana.
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  • James Sadler and 2 others like this.
  • Mark Bethune yeah. well, thanks for ruining my day 
  • Claire Carter I wish it weren't so.
  • Mark Bethune crap. guess I need to "cultivate" my kids winter project.
  • Claire Carter I'm sure it's different when they only smoke at home, under their parents' supervision. That probably changes everything.
  • Mark Bethune of course. of course. Who am I to judge?
  • Mark Bethune I'm lucky to send my kids to Whataburger and back.
  • Charles King Good, very good points. Kids can go down the wrong path very quickly when parents are not unified and bad influences and mj are available. If a parent uses marijuana kids will figure it out.
    January 9 at 3:48pm via mobile · Like · 1
  • Claire Carter A world without boundaries is a bad thing for kids.
  • Tom Davidson I am sure that can all be fixed by a few months in the Llano county jail.
  • Faisal Aswat the same could be said for alcohol.
  • Tim Lehner Not really, Faisal. Alcohol is demonstrably much worse than MJ by any measure you care to use. For the sake of consistency, and the children, consumption or production of alcohol should be met with the very harshest penalties.
  • Faisal Aswat have you've been watching Boardwalk Empire? 
  • Tim Lehner No, never heard of Boarwalk Empire. I just have a philosophical/political fascination with this topic.
  • Faisal Aswat because i don't know you, i couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic. were you joking or do you advocate for the prohibition of alcohol?
  • Tim Lehner You are right, sarcasm doesn't travel well over the ether, my fault. Yes, I was being sarcastic. 

    While addiction is a genuine horror, with few equals in its destructive power, the 'solution' of prohibition introduces many more problems than it solves... and doesn't work... and destroys more lives unnecessarily than the drug itself, and wastes precious resource. 

    This is true, as we know from history, for a very dangerous drug like alcohol, and even more so for MJ which is much safer.
  • Tim Lehner (and while I recognize alcohol as a dangerous drug, it is one I enjoy regularly, and in moderation)
  • Faisal Aswat ah. ... i agree. my point was that while what Clairesays is true, that the beginnings of many a downward spiral may have included use of the weed, i don't actually believe that the indo is the root cause of the negative behavior a person who could be considered a "bad seed" (GET IT?!!?). i know of far more instances of difficulty, hardship and negative circumstance caused by prohibition of the chronic, than what Claire is seeing at work. i know far too many functional and good people who benignly and recreationally smoke for me to consider them "criminally minded" at risk of causing harm to themselves or others. It's as ridiculous as saying that someone who has two beers on a friday night is initiating a path of self destruction.
  • Claire Carter so many adults do use mj in moderation without the downfall of civilization. I know this, but it breaks my heart to see a carload of kids being stopped together with meth and one of them had just taken a bunch of photos of them with handfuls of pills and bongs. With the hashtags (get it?) of "#girlzwhosmokeweed" and "#girlsgettinghigh" and tattoos on their wrists saying "Be true to yourself" and then reading the report and learning that the youngest was 16 and from a family where the mother has no idea what's going on. 

    It's like an autopsy - the photos change everything.
  • Claire Carter and Faisal Aswat and Tim Lehner, you would like each other a lot - being as mindful as you both are.
  • Faisal Aswat that is sad. it's also sad that the parents have no idea even though you say they are from good families. now, neither i, nor my BFF, Tim are saying "yay, thumbs up, meth!" i think, as i learned from a previous thread, that we can all agree that there is an extreme in that drug that needs some kind of response. but, i would bet that there are just as many pics of those 16 yr olds drinking and celebrating #girlzwhoaredrinking also. i don't think the root cause of these problems, both with addiction or with the crime that can accompany it, is the drinking or the weed usage. for experimenting high school kids, i think there is in some ways more of an allure with pot BECAUSE it's illegal and also, so common. in my opinion, the cause of these issues are far deeper then the initial drink or joint at a party. my issue with the prohibition argument of weed is that many a young person runs into over reactive law enforcement that then tends to make much of late adolescence and early 20s substantially harder for that kid, then if they got caught drinking.
  • Claire Carter agreed to an extent, but these girls are so into the "drugs R glam" lifestyle and the gangsta-adoration that they have already started down a road they won't be able to reverse.
  • Faisal Aswat yes, but remember so much of that "gangsta-adoration" came out of an era when gang crime was concentrated around the selling of marijuana and was celebrated by gang based hip hop of that time nwa, easy e, doc dre, or what snoop refers to as the g-funk era. i question how much of the extremism around the drug which can be argued is, actually, not one of the most devastating, but easily as benign or malignant as alcohol, is due to the fact that it is against the law. i think so much of the "glam," as you say, is due to it's legally prohibitive nature. for me, there is an equivalence to the lameness of celebrated weed culture with the "beer pong," "chug chug chug," "SPRING BREAK, BRO!," "i got sooo hammered in NOLA, dude!" but at the end of the day, i think it is fine for both to be testing grounds for the early, burgeoning adults. some will be dumbshits and some wont. also, my daughter just put half a crayon in her mouth, and we're a little concerned that that could become an issue.
  • Julie Hooper Abad I don't think pot has much to do with it, it is a culture of not caring a culture of kids that are not well attended. I think it is an outward sign of trouble but not the root of the problem.
  • Claire Carter nope - Faisal, she's just at that "explore the world through my mouth" phase.
  • Faisal Aswat 15th months? i thought that was like 6 months ago?
  • Claire Carter Julie, do you mean a culture of not caring ABOUT a culture of kids that are not well-attended? I assume so, and I agree. Lack of supervision is such a problem, especially when paired with a media-culture in which so many parents assume that the kids are smart enough to navigate the issues presented by gangsta culture and screw everybody in the niteclub in an effort at self-empowerment and they are just kids. They DO soak up the culture like sponges, so if we aren't there every step of the way as parents making the world as safe as we can and impsting our own values, they don't have much chance of not ending up like these children I dealt with today.
  • Claire Carter Erin Gottwald's god-daughter is very thorough.
  • Faisal Aswat now, i know we're just gettin started in our household, but something that i often think about is how we live in a culture that carts kids from activity to activity all day long. while some of the environments and the activities are positive, it also seems like it would minimize the amount of time parents actually spend with their kids.
  • Claire Carter It DOES! That is a total one of my pet peeves. We are THE primary influence on our children and for us to think that anything will enrich them as much as having our attention and instruction is crazy. Plus it makes me tired and mean to have to be taking people places all the time and I know that isn't good for anybody.
  • Julie Hooper Abad a child that is "not well attended" is not watched. that means that their parents do not pay attention to their diet, screen time, etc.
  • Claire Carter correct. I agree.
  • Julie Hooper Abad your job is a tough one claire
  • Claire Carter My heart breaks daily. I need more exposure to normal, run-of-the-mill, doing just fine families.
  • Faisal Aswat although, i must say, it must be a lot tougher when they hit teen years. perhaps it's easier for us to idealize with younger chillins.
  • Claire Carter I had been the prosecutor of juvenile delinquents for the DA for several years before I had children. And while mine were babies, I was representing teen-aged boys in a prison setting - usually for assaulting staff. It influenced my child rearing philosophies greatly.
  • Tim Lehner Bad parenting, whether attributable to 'free choices' of the parents or something more subtle like mental illness/incompetence, emotional issues, or just being too busy, has a terrible effect on the children involved. 

    What Claire seems to be referring to is (mild) neglect, which can happen in normal-seeming families. The consequence of neglect depends a lot on luck: the temperament of the kid, where he/she lives, who their neighbors and friends are. When they go bad, they will go to whatever 'bad' thing is available: sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco crime. The legal availability of those items is not required and as Faisal suggested their illlegal status may even make them more attractive.

    It is indeed heart-breaking and has real, negative, terrible consequences for those youths. The impulse to help, to 'fix it' is understandable.

    My point is that making weed (or alcohol, or sex) *very* illegal won't solve anything. At all. It will merely make criminals out of normal, 'good', kids/people doing what kids/people do.

    Any person with a shred of empathy wants to *fix* the problem of good kids gone bad, bad parenting, poor choices, but it isn't really possible without addressing the true underlying issues: poverty, ignorance, bad parenting, mental health. Attacking the symptoms (weed), especially by making it illegal is futile at best and couter-productive in many more cases.
  • Faisal Aswat well put. i would add that one of the hardest root causes to understand is "temperament of the kid," as Tim mentioned. The difficulty of raising children is that their own unique character and inherent and very human willfulness will play out however they decide for it play out. In other words, people will always have to make their own mistakes. I think the hard part for the authority involved is to display authority without totally scarring and jading an adolescent to the point of wanting to continue down the path. Sometimes if the consequence or "sentence" is far more severe than a crime merits, the result could be a young person who decides to give up on improvement because of feeling trapped or branded.
  • Claire Carter I think most parents assume that the kids are alright and aren't paying attention to the trends and signs that I see. And maybe they are alright. And maybe all manner of things will be well, but I can't overlook the ominous onslaught of a very bad media and insidious narcissistic messages hidden in the popular culture.
  • Genna Ford Faia I will say that I wish this was a bad parenting issue because if it were I could fix my daughters issue. However, my husband and I are good parents, unified, non-drug users, not big drinkers, aware and involved in our children's lives, attacked the problem with all the resources we had available to us but the pot use continued and grew to much more serious issues. I WISH the problem with my child was something I could have changed, and perhaps I could of. I often wonder why I consistently beat myself up about what I did wrong and have yet to find the answer. But this thread has reminded me of why I always feel at fault.
  • Genna Ford Faia And on another note, my daughter also blames her father and I for all of her problems, not the result of her choosing to make consistently bad choices.
  • Claire Carter No, no, no, Genna. We are not here to beat ourselves up. We are here to say that we are not in control of everything they're exposed to, and we cannot be. There are peers and the media and that pesky old free will.
  • Claire Carter I made a bunch of bad decisions and I had great parents.
  • Genna Ford Faia Free will is a bitch!
  • Linda Kaye Gusnowski I don't even know how to comment here - I have raised every one of my kids in church - we have demonstrated a good work ethic - they get into High School and their peers have such a larger influence than we do - and we feel like failures and slacker pa...See More
  • Shawn Michael Rogers the drug war = lost cause and a huge waste of taxpayer money. Period
  • Shawn Michael Rogers if only Liberty really meant something in this country
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