USA, Canada /
Differences in How Polish People Raise a Child and How Americans Raise a Child [149]
In the idillic beachside settings around me, there are a lot of kids that get caught up in drugs, get dui's, live their lives teethering on the edge of an abyss.
I've watched parents who opt for tough love, sometimes because they just reach the end of their rope, sometimes because their friends or Oprah tell them they should..
Some parents put everything on the line and don't give up, fully believing that they have to give them another chance until the kid turns around or somebody is dead.
Some kids, the moment their family gave up on them get completely lost to drugs and crime. They become the wards of the state one way or another; jail, hospital, living in the streets.. Some get a job and pull themselves up. Around here, joining armed forces is a popular move when your parents are fed up with you.
Some families now laugh about the hard time their kids gave them, talk about things they had to put up with... There are kids that go through depression, apparently lazy and uncooperative, and their families pull them through it. There are many, many 20 somethings still living with their parents, sometimes because they want to, sometimes because they have to.
I have one lady friend who to this day regrets handing her daughter to the courts system ( the daughter is fine now, but will always resent her mother), and I know one woman who should have had her daughter committed long time ago..
I believe that everyone wants to have a happy, productive life, and if they don't, they either do not know how, or don't believe that they are able to. They are not cooked, and the parents are not done, regardless of the age.
On the other hand, there are parents that did the best they could but that was not good enough. Or the kid is "bad" for whatever reason... so I can see that there might be a time when the parents have to give up to "save" themselves.
So, this is a long into into my advice: you have to play a lot of scenarios in your head, and observe to see which one fits. Don't think about what somebody else did, observe the mother, kids, make educated guesses about different outcomes of alternative situations. Sometimes, for example, helping a kid get a job he likes solves everybody's problems.
