Michael wrote: "A touching story with some of the same elements:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/6...

Sylvia wrote: "... the mother was a [problem:] - was her daughter better off with her? ...."
Thank you so much for the link to this story. The comment the teacher sent home was a beautiful lesson to us all in how to approach a difficult situation!

A touching story with some of the same elements:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/6...

Sylvia wrote: "... the mother was a [problem:] - was her daughter better off with her? ... If we care about children like this, we try and reach them somehow through schools or other venues..."

Sylvia, I haven't seen Gone Baby Gone, but I think reaching out to children like this is among some of the most important things we can do. Reseach shows that the most productive time to do it is during the preschool years, but I think that any time can make a difference.

Mary Ellen, I don't think that either parent had a defined mental illness though I think some would disagree. The father was definitely an alcoholic. I think the pivotal factor is Walls' presentation of the parents. She is extremely straightforward, not sugar coating and yet not heaping blame. That allows you to form your own reaction. And, I find that extremely interesting among people I know who have read it. I have a good friend who has more conservative values than I do. However, she was very sympathetic to the father, primarily based on a scene in which he gave each child a star in the sky for Christmas. On the other hand, I lost patience with both parents about halfway through. And, when the father used Walls' as bait for a sucker game of pool in a bar, I about went through the ceiling.

I thought again about this whole discussion last night when we watched "Gone Baby Gone" on television. I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but there was a serious point about the mother in this story. Stop reading here if you haven't seen the movie --
The mother was a shallow, careless drug user with poor morals - was her daughter better off with her? The movie leaves you hanging. The neighborhood was dangerous (but extremely colorful). If we care about children like this, we try and reach them somehow through schools or other venues.

In a way, this situation reminds me of the family in "Angela's Ashes." There, the dad drank most of the money he earned, and the mom used a fair amount to buy her cigarettes. At the same time, several children died, basically of malnutrition. Yet the author portrays both parents lovingly (the mother is shown as a heroic figure), while the author pours out bile on various church figures who, admittedly, did not have the sympathy they should have shown for the family. I guess the author accepted his parents' flaws -- the addictions that kept them from providing even the most minimal necessities for their children -- and saw that, in their own way, they WERE loving. Oddly, he held outsiders to a higher standard, and could not forgive them.

The parents in this memoir apparently suffered from mental illness, right? A former co-worker was able to forgive a parent's dysfunction, also stemming from mental illness, and provide loving care as the parent aged, though he had not received the same care as a child.

I have deep admiration for all these people who are big-hearted enough to see beyond weakness to the loving hearts of the parents who disappointed, or in some cases, even abused them....

Ruth wrote: "I have read several places about how psychologists puzzle over why a terrible childhood damages some children, yet others, even in the same family, seem have the inner resources to come through unscathed.That might have been their salvation."

In researching my current work I have read this as well Ruth. Experts seem to agree it is both the inner resources AND access to a role model. If the role model is not a loving parent (as it seems to have been for Jeannette) then often a teacher, neighbor or other family member.

Beej wrote: "But, again, what amazes me is that the parents' love for their kids seemed to out weigh the negative influences of their family life. Wall's mom always looked to pull the silver lining out of each cloud and maybe she had the right idea."

I don't think we should ever underestimate the power of love.

Great thread. I'm trying to find Jeannette's touring schedule--would appreciate any information on this.

Mary Ellen, you ask some really good questions. I don't know the answers. All I know is that's exactly what happened within this family. And, actually, that's what puzzled me, too. Part of the answer might lie in the fact that these were exceptionally bright children who learned through necessity how to survive at a very young age. Also, the parents, especially the father, spent an extraordinary amount of time doing things with these kids. And he had them totally involved in his dreams, including the house of glass which he firmly believed he would build one day. On top of that, the parents instilled a tremendous amount of confidence in these kids.

Thus is a window to human nature, and does allow for a whole lot of questions, more questions than there are answers.

I am a bit mystified how parents can regularly fail to provide food for their children (HIDING food from them?!) and ignore sexual abuse and still be showing great love. Was their acceptance and refusal to impose rules on their children, simply a benign indifference?

Mystified, but I think reading this book would just drive me crazy... A greater mystery, how some of the children managed to grow into fairly healthy, functional adulthood.

These older kids got the feeling that anything was possible and they weren't very hemmed in by what other people thought of them.

Yes! Exactly! and therein lies the rub; can kids overcome the adversity of a totally dysfunctional family if other life skills are instilled in them?

Beej wrote: "With only 8 pages left to read, I'm at the tail end of this memoir. And I've been thinking a lot about it today. In a nut shell, and so as to not ruin the book for those of you who haven't read it,..." I too was blown away by this book and have thought about it since. One of my guesses about Jeannette and the older children is that, at least in the early years, they were given a great sense of wonder and creativity. When I think back to my early years it seems everything was geared to teaching me manners, how to be "mature", not doing this, not doing that. These older kids got the feeling that anything was possible and they weren't very hemmed in by what other people thought of them. Just a drop in the bucket of my thoughts. Somehow, I'm not interested in reading the new book.

You're welcome. I really enjoyed that interview. She's so lively.

Beej wrote: "Now, this is my quandary..do I go ahead and read 'Half Broke Horses' next as I has planned to do or do I hold off to see if it makes the reading list?"
I vote for reading it now. You can always make notes about things you would like to discuss.

Again, thank you, Summer. In that interview, Walls hits on something of which I am a firm believer; except for sci-fi, there really isn't anything such as 'fiction.' Whatever has been written as fiction has happened, has been lived somewhere in this vast world. It's real.

Now, this is my quandary..do I go ahead and read 'Half Broke Horses' next as I has planned to do or do I hold off to see if it makes the reading list?

Great interview, Summer. Thanks for linking to it. I'm planning to nominate Half Broke Horses for our reading list.

Beej, I think Bastard Out of Carolina is exactly what Walls describes in this interview, a novel based on real experiences.

Here's a good interview about Half Broke Horses and how it turned out to be what she calls a "true-life novel."
http://www.wowowow.com/relationships/cal...

Oh yes, forget to mention....as Summer said in the earlier discussion, Half Broke Horses is a 'novelized memoir.' Isn't that a strange idea..

Barbara, Yes, I read Bastard Out of Carolina and loved it. I didn't remember that it was a memoir tho! Summer thanks for providing the link to the discussion. I wonder where I was? Must have been during one of my little internet breaks, something I do periodically in an attempt to prioritize my life.

I love the choice these people, both Walls and Allison, made by refusing to be a victims. That might have been their salvation. But, again, what amazes me is that the parents' love for their kids seemed to out weigh the negative influences of their family life. Wall's mom always looked to pull the silver lining out of each cloud and maybe she had the right idea.

Beej, I think you will find that earlier discusson that Summer linked interesting. If I remember correctly, there was someone who contributed saying that she worked with Walls for years. I found that note particularly insightful.

Did you ever read Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison? She came to Ann Arbor to speak at Border's after I read it and was an extremely entertaining person. But, her major message is that she refused to be a victim. When Angelica Huston bought the rights to the screenplay and made a movie out of it (TV, I think?), the one disappointment that Allison had is that she thought she was portrayed as a victim. That seems to me to be a very productive mindset.

I have read several places about how psychologists puzzle over why a terrible childhood damages some children, yet others, even in the same family, seem have the inner resources to come through unscathed.

Beej:

She is definitely touring to promote Half Broke Horses A True-Life Novel. She is coming to my local library this coming Tuesday, so perhaps she will be making her way South soon.

My view, especially after having been to see the author speak, is that persons are largely responsible for their own choices. Persons can overcome a dark childhood, perhaps in equal rates of those who have had a nurturing childhood turn criminal activity. Certainly, there are advantages to good nutrition and other things these children were lacking. In addition, there were many times these parents thrust, or permitted, a more adult role than the child was ready for. I loaned my book out, but here are some recollections from memory: Jeanette was burned as a result of cooking her own hot dog as a preschooler. Her father stole money from them and ruined the family’s property. Her mother hid food from the children and didn’t share it. Her father took her along with him to seduce and con a man in a bar when she was still very young. Her mother had a teaching job for a short time and Jeanette tried to parcel out the money. Basically, her whole life the parent-child roles were reversed. That fits the definition of dysfunction: loose parent-child boundaries.

What I admire about Jeanette Walls is that she did not allow her unfortunate childhood to define her. Her attitude is refreshing and inspiring. I thought during my first reading of the book that either it was an embellished story or she was in denial. After seeing her appearance and rereading the book, I now think that she acknowledges, but doesn’t focus on, the negative aspects of anything. Her success has come through her own perseverance. That is something persons with a more privileged childhood occasionally fail to grasp.

Also, I would point out that the youngest daughter didn't become what society generally views as a success and mostly rejected her siblings’ efforts to provide more stability and security.

Here is a link to an earlier discussion: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1246...

I like her voice. I look forward to reading Half-Broke Horses. (I used to read her gossip column, too.) I highly recommend seeing her in person. Her personality just fills up a room.

I wrote this shortly after 5:30 this morning, bleary eyed and half asleep, over at my blog. I'm serious. This book left me very puzzled.

_________________________________________



Dysfunction; Fact or Fallacy

It's only 5:40 Saturday morning. I've been awake for an hour now, already had a cup of coffee, and I awoke thinking about a book I've just finished called 'The Glass Castle' by Jeannette Walls.



The book, a memoir, tells about the author's deeply dysfunctional family and I cannot stop thinking about it. It has left me in a bit of a mental and emotional quandary because, tho as dysfunctional as a family can get, these people also lived a life of vibrancy and love. They put meaning into the word, 'colorful.'

I looked up the phrase 'dysfunctional family.' I found this:

"Some of the characteristics of dysfunctional family systems are as follows:

Blaming; failure to take responsibility for personal actions and feelings; and invalidation of other family members' feelings.
Boundaries between family members that are either too loose or too rigid. For example, the parent may depend excessively on the child for emotional support (loose boundaries) or prevent the child from developing autonomy by making all the decisions for the child (rigid boundaries).
Boundaries between the family as a whole and the outside world may also be too loose or too rigid.
A tendency for family members to enact set roles--caregiver, hero, scapegoat, saint, bad girl or boy, little prince or princess--that serve to restrict feelings, experience, and self-expression.
A tendency to have an "identified patient"--one family member who is recognized as mentally unhealthy, who may or may not be in treatment, but whose symptoms are a sign of the inner family conflict. Often the identified patient's problems function to disguise the larger family issues. For example, a child may be regarded as a bully and a troublemaker in school and labeled a "problem child," when he may in fact be expressing conflicts and problems, such as abuse from home, by acting out and being "bad."
Family therapists, like other therapists, take many different treatment approaches--psychodynamic, behavioral, cognitive, or a combination of these therapies. They may talk to members individually, together, and in subgroups. They may ask family members to reenact situations, or to do "homework" by modifying elements of their behavior and responses. As with individual therapy, one of the goals of family counseling is to reframe problems so that family members can see specific events and behaviors more clearly in a broader systems perspective. "


Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood & Adolescence. Gale Research, 1998.

If you haven't read this book but plan on doing so, you might want to hold off reading this because there are some spoilers contained within.

This family is beyond poor. They often go days without eating, they cannot afford to wash their clothes regularly. For one, running water is not something they always have in their home. On top of that, they only own a few items of clothing. The mother is a manic depressive, the father is a severe alcoholic, and they are both drifters and dreamers. There are hints of sexual abuse perpetrated by extended family members and basically down played by the parents. The children are dragged from state to state, almost always in the middle of the night in order to escape from bill collectors and landlords.

Now here's the part I cannot really get to jive in my brain; despite all of this, is this really a dysfunctional family? t/hey don't really fit into any of the definitions I posted above. In fact, the parents were loving and supportive toward each other and their four children. They didn't try to squelch each others' dreams. For the most part, they adopted a live and let live attitude toward one another. And, rather than fostering any kind of leaning toward a cycle of dysfunction, they all were firm believers that anything was possible, that dreams were not meant to be just dreams but fully expected to become realities.

And so we have these four kids, who have lived their childhood in ways we would all deem as dysfunctional, who all became successful and thriving members of society.

So, were they dysfunctional? To me, the very word implies an inability to function. Yet these people functioned beyond merely well.

Perhaps, despite what would rightfully be labelled as abuse and neglect, negative childhood experiences are not as damaging as one would believe they are. Perhaps a deep and supportive love can override the effects of abuse and neglect. I'm beginning to wonder if we put too much stock on dysfunction and too little stock on love. And I am not trying to brush off abuse. I'm just saying that maybe our focus should change, just a little bit.

------------------------------------


Why weren't these kids severely damaged? Why have they done so incredibly well in life? I just can't figure it out.

Thanks, Al. I already have it. It's called 'Half Broke Horses' and it's sitting here on my nightstand. It's about Walls' maternal grndmother, someone I have already 'met' in 'The Glass Castle.'

Beej:

She has a new book out - about her grandmother's life. The early reviews have not been as good as Glass Castle, but you might want to check it out.

With only 8 pages left to read, I'm at the tail end of this memoir. And I've been thinking a lot about it today. In a nut shell, and so as to not ruin the book for those of you who haven't read it, the best way I can describe the Walls family is to call them a dichotomy. The family is deeply, deeply disfunctional but at the same time, brilliantly vibrant. Dad is a dreamer and a drifter who teaches his children about all sorts of things. He's also a serious alcoholic who disappears for days and days, steals from his kids, and even debates, not for as much as a second, whether or not to take his 13 year old daughter to the bars with him in order to lure drunken miners to gamble over pool games. The mother seems to me to be manic depressive and lives in a fantasy world where everything bad that happens has its silver lining. And when the silver lining disappears behind its cloud, so does she, lying in bed for days on end with the covers pulled up over her head.

These people have absolutely no money. They go days without food. The kids sneak scraps from the garbage cans to fill their tummys and at least on one extended stay in a rat trap of a house, had no plumbing whatsoever and used a bucket placed in the kitchen to relieve themselves through the night.

I am having a little difficulty wrapping my head around the idea that such a grossly disfunctional family is also one of closeness and deep love, where the children idolize their father. And as adults, they all, each of the four kids, become completely successful, healthy and totally sane members of society.

The title is one of the most apropos titles I think I have ever seen on a cover. It is what the father has named the house he plans on building one day. It is a structure, totally self sufficient, made entirely of glass, fragile yet open, filled with light but no protective walls, EXACTLY like the family, itself.

What a brilliant, brilliant accounting. I think we will see a lot of good things come from this author.