What's Up With Parent's?!?!?!?

There is a horrible trend... I guess it is a trend since it seems to be occuring frequently.

Parent's get fed up with their teens and either A) send them to live with someone else or B) have them committed to an institution of some sort.

I admit, it is not easy being the parent to a teenager, I have raised one successfully and now I am on #2. The emotions are high, the backtalk is neverending, the stress can be almost unbearable but, it passes. There are good days mixed in with the not so good days. And they are our children, we made them this way. It has also been scientifically proven that the teen brain is not developed in some areas, that it actually doesn't develope in these areas until around age 19 or 20. One of these undeveloped sections of the brain is the ability to think long term, to look beyond today at how a set of circumstances or choices will affect them tomorrow.

But you do not send your children away to someone else!!!!! You tough it out with them. Last week my daughter's boyfriends' family placed him in a Psychiatric Hospital. I have known this boy for 2 years, I spend approx. 4 hours a day with him. He is a wonderful TEENAGE boy. He is talented, smart, funny and intuitive. His family is screwed up beyond belief but he is a great young man. But his mother is tired of parenting and she doesn't want Dad to have the kids so this was her answer.

I called the hospital where he is a patient and told them what I know of his family;
Mom was a teacher and messed around with a student, she is now married to him
Mom is an admitted alcoholic
Mom also has a gambling problem
Mom is never at home and she leaves the 8 year old home alone.... often
The family is supposed to be in counseling per a court order, but they do not go

Of course the hospital did not have this information, I figured that the info they would have would be very one-sided and probably not in the favor of the teen. I also told them that he would be welcome to move in with us. This way there are other options.

My daughter has been beside herself with worry over this as have we. Mom will not take him out "until he has learned a lesson." Of course the facility will keep him as long as they can, they are paying cash for his stay. They did come up with a diagnosis of depression.... well no s*%#&@, I would be surprised if he wasn't depressed.

My oldest daughter works part-time at an institution for emotionally disturbed teens and she said that 90% of the teen resident's have a diagnosis of "normal behaviour for age." And upon reading the charts it is basically that the parent(s) were just tired of their behaviour.... which was normal.

I know another person who uses the local County run temporary home for juvenile offender's (TLC of Johnson County) as her babysitter. Whenever she gets fed up she sends her boy to this facility where we (the tax payor's) foot the bill for his care so she doesn't have to be around him for a few weeks. They get him to school, entertain him, feed him and clothe him. Then when she is rested up.... he goes back home.

If a child shows a lack of respect, doesn't do their chores, smokes, breaks curfew, etc. you need to look at yourself. YOU were the one that taught them to behave in this way. YOU as the parent have the sole job of teaching your children to follow the rules, show respect for themselves and others and to be contributing member's of society. So when they don't do these things it is your fault... not theirs, so why send them away. You need to tough it out together.

I started instilling these values and norms in my children from the second they began socializing with others. I don't buy the "single parent" crap.... I was a single parent, I was also a teen mother, 17 to be exact. But I managed to work, go to school and raise my daughter without help from my family, they were in SE Asia at the time. With my youngest child, I worked, got my BS degree, volunteered for 2 organizations and raised my 2 girls. This time I was married and he was a great help but I can't say it was any easier.

There is just something so wrong about this whole thing. The foster care system is to the exploding point. There are more children waiting to be adopted than there are families. And now we have children being sent away from home because they don't meet the expectations of the people who raised them.

People do the same thing with dogs but you hear more of a fuss being made about that than you do when children are involved. I do believe in Karma... what goes around comes around, everything you put out there whether good or bad comes back to you threefold. So I know that these parent's will get it in the long term but only after they have severly damaged their flesh and blood.