Growing up, Alice and her sister functioned as the caretaking unit for their mother since their father was emotionally unavailable. Alice’s job was to smooth over any disruptions and assure her family everything would be okay during her mother’s panic attacks. Everyone in Alice’s house was quite and reserved, leaving Alice feeling lonely since she describes herself as loud and weird. Keeping up appearances was very important to the Sebold family and Alice was told as a young girl not to share family secrets, such as her mother’s struggle with alcoholism. Alice was raped and beaten by an African American man on May 8th 1891 at Syracuse University.
She also experienced a lot of mental abuse from her mom, who seemed to cut her down more than anything. When it came to her relationship with Melchior, she just seemed to go with the flow. She kind of got sucked into doing things that she, possibly, may have not done if she would have had a closer, more open relationship with her mom. Wendla longs to feel loved and at one point, even confuses the physical abuse that one of her friends experiences at home as real love and begs Melchior to hit her. She was a very lost child that needed more attention on the home front.
For example, in Speak, Melinda’s mother is speaking to the school counselor. “That’s the point, she won’t say anything! I can’t get a word out of her! She’s mute” (Anderson 114). This scene shows a parent who is unable to speak to her daughter, and she handles this disconnection with anger, which serves to make daughter less talkative.
"The doctor said she was just too lazy to talk, and now we can't shut her up" was a favourite. She often wonders about the trauma that silenced her as a child. Violence riddled the simple daily activities. Love and trust never surfaced and the safest place for Jessie was within the dark walls of the cubby holes in the bedroom she shared with her four sisters. The violence against the children soon turned to violence against each other and today they still struggle with loving and supporting each other.
Everyone goes through it whether they like it or not. To begin with, the narrator strongly hates the word girl. During her grandmas visits she would always try to teach the narrator the proper ways of how to be a girl like how a girl sits or how they speak. In response, the narrator "continued to slam the doors and sir as awkwardly as possible..." (52). When being called a girl she feels like a child.
You see many shows like Super Nanny were kids walk all over the parents, because they know that all they get is a time out. Parents have to deal with a lot from their kids that they shouldn't have to take over and over. Parents try and take things from their kids, but it turns out that the kids cause more problems because their bored without it. Kids do things that they shouldn't and parents tell them they can’t do that by giving them a light spank on the butt. The parents show that their not going to allow the child goofing off and they will be listened to.
If I could change one thing in my community it would be to offer parenting classes. I listen to my friends complain about their relationship with their parents and the lack of communication between them often. What I have come to realize is that both parties don’t know that the relationship is broken and they need to change the way they are talking to each other because obviously it is not working. I believe that if parents knew different ways to talk and help their kids then more could get done in the relationship. It is hard raising kids and hurtful things can be said, but I just don’t think a parent should react in a hurtful manner.
The Walls children learned from a very young age to depend on each other for their most basic needs because both their parents were self-absorbed and distracted by their own interest. Jeanette’s father, Rex, was a chronic alcoholic and her mother, Rose-Mary, was over-focused on herself; painting, reading, and writing. Both parent although they severely neglected their children, really loved them, and the children were happy despite their day to day struggles with poverty, neglect, and troubling times. The Walls’ children adapted to their environment and circumstances of having dysfunctional adults as parents by reversing places with them. The children joined together to help their parents to function outside the home.
Why, everyone changes but she was taking the wrong path which led her to where she is today. She would always get into arguments at home with her parents, she was very stubborn, hard-headed, and anything that you would tell her would go in one ear and out the other. Almost like if she didn’t even have a conscience. But luckily, everyone knew that I love to help people so they thought that I would help her (of course) and to get her back on track with their friends and family and all that but it was really hard for me to help her since she was constantly doing what she wasn’t supposed to do. So long story short, I gave her deep lectures, I brought her to church with me, I would help her in class (when she would fall asleep) I would wake her back up by embarrassing her in front of the class by saying “Listen, this is your desk in your history class, not the bed you have at home.” Yes, I said it in front of everyone but it was because I was sick of having to “take care of her” almost like if I was her second
Children of Divorce Michael LaBarge DeVry University Children of Divorce According to Elizabeth Osmer’s biography (n.d.), growing up in a dysfunctional family, she was forced to take care of herself due to the fact that the adults in her family did not have the parenting skills needed to take care of her. Because she did not have the proper adult guidance and supervision in her childhood, she grew through adolescence and into adulthood lacking the life skills needed to be a healthy, productive member of society. This led her down a path of constant self-destruction. For many years she spiraled out of control. Trying to cope with the life she was in, she used what few skills she had acquired to manage her life.