@alive: "will not" and "can not" -- there's a big difference. Moms and Dads, boys and girls, kids of all ages: Direct your attention to the center ring where Smiley's Person will commit an act of apostasy.
They can. As much as I hate to admit it -- and I hate hate hate to admit it -- there is an essential truth in the "kids are resilient" school of bullsh*t.
Note that the phrase isn't "kids are impervious to shot and shell" but is "kids are resilient."
Resilient. Says the Oxford English Dictionary,
Quote:
fig. Of persons, their minds, etc.: Rising readily again after being depressed; hence, cheerful, buoyant, exuberant.
In other words, they survive.
We hate to acknowledge this, we parental LBS's. We hate the breezy assurances Walkaways and their enablers provide: Oh, don't worry -- kids are resilient.
But hating to acknowledge it doesn't make it untrue.
They won't be "the same." But that's not equivalent to "damaged for life." It can mean that, but doesn't necessarily mean that.
But the Landmark Study! You yourself have invoked it! True, but I recognize that a limitation is that in the Landmark Study any self-reported "effect" is taken to be an "effect." Valuable as it is, it's hard to parse out which effects are "true," in the sense that they produce behavioral changes, and which are merely reflective ("oh, yeah, I guess I was pretty upset").
They'll soldier on.
And we know this, when we're honest with ourselves. My cousin, four years younger than I, has a 10-year-old who is dying. Who has been dying for 5 years and who will, barring divine intervention, almost certainly be dead before the candles are lit for the 18th-birthday cake. The child knows this, knows the suffering, knows the difference from other children (not many in motorized wheelchairs). And the child wasn't always "that way." It was a change. But the child has adapted. Not living the "best" life, stacked up against some abstract standard, but indeed living the best life the child can.
Resilient.
I know it's not comparable, not in a direct sense since divorce is, on the whole, far more "preventable" than death, but nearly 6,000 children are growing up in America today having lost a parent in the military since 9/11. This is from a 2006 article in the VFW magazine:
Quote:
When 21-year-old Illinois Army National Guard Sgt. Jessica Cawvey went to Iraq, she left a six-year-old daughter, Sierra, who made her pinkie-swear she wouldn't die. A roadside bomb in Fallujah broke that sacred promise between mother and daughter on Oct. 6, 2004.
No one expects that Sierra, or the thousands like her, will ever be "normal" compared, again, to that abstract standard, but there will be a normal for her. A normal that sucks, certainly. But a normal none-the-less.
Would it be best if the post-D normal were avoided, prevented, stopped, busted? Of course. That's the "will not" in what you wrote -- that's the Will.
But "can not"? They can. In some of our sitchs, they may have to. And it's our job, IMO, to make that as pain-free -- not painless -- as possible.
Which is why your instinct -- that you have to make it work for You and for Them -- is right on target, regardless of what you would prefer to do.
