I'm reading The Help right now and am enjoying it, though I haven't had time to get very far yet. It's about the Black maids in the 1960's in Mississippi. The first character they introduce, Aibilene, is basically raising the daughter of the family she's working for. She gives her all the love and care the mother doesn't/refuses to give. In the part I read last night Aibilene realizes that the daughter will grow up to be just like her mother in spite of all the loving Aibilene gives her. It's sad, but true.

Parental influence is so powerful, but for some reason we think we're powerless. It's a bad irony because power unused is power abused. If the parents don't use their parental power to teach and influence, the child will take the power and the family becomes dysfunctional.

The mother (Miss Leefolt) in the book is not a sympathetic character, but with the perspective of the daughter becoming just like the mother, they both become tragic characters perpetuating the things they were taught as children--emotional claustrophobia being one of those things. Sometimes I wish I could help everyone learn to relate on a feeling level. But then I realize there is so much more I need to learn about that myself.

Ouch!

A few days ago I saw a young boy (preschool) hit his mom when she didn't do what he wanted. It was a pretty hard hit for his size. She joked with me later that I looked shocked but that she hardly noticed it. I don't know if I was shocked as much as concerned. I know that it won't be long before she can't help but notice it.

I feel for her and for the boy. He is trying to find out the limits and when he can't find them he gets resentful. She sees him as a wild child and excuses the behavior. How unfortunate that sometimes we as parents are so emotionally entangled with our children that we don't notice misbehavior. Or if we do notice, we have no conviction that we can change it. In so many ways we tie our own hands and become fairly ineffective in the teaching process. To compound matters, the children increase in anger and disrespect because they see us as all powerful and can't understand why we don't bother to set safe limits. I know I've been guilty of that at times. Hopefully, I'm getting better.