Filed under: Alcoholism, Bad Children of Divorce, High School Drop Out, Mentally Ill parents, PTSD, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., School Drop Out - High School or College, Violence, separate households
Today there is news that an ex soldier in Iraq has been found guilty of having Murdered a family in order to rape the 14 year old daughter. The ex-soldier is Stephen Green from Texas. He and a group of other soldiers had planned the rape. Green’s murders apparently came as a surprise. They were stationed in a particularly troublesome spot in the war zone known as The Triangle of Death. A Washington Post article by Andrew Tilgman tells about his meeting with Green and his group. It’s called “I came over here because I wanted to kill people.” Apparently, the reporter didn’t pay attention to Green’s words because he had heard this sort of brute honesty from all the soldiers. The article alluded to a troublesome childhood so grudgingly I looked to see if Green was a Child of D. Despite his minor offenses with the law and an angry personality Green was allowed into the military during a time when enlistments were down.
I’ve sort of been watching all this attention on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder regarding the Iraq War and have wondered if the problem is just now receiving attention or if all the Children of D are enlisting in order to get away from stressful situations and then are buckling under the extra stresses of war.
Green was born on May 2, 1985. Spent early years in Midland, TX. Parents divorced but don’t know what age. Green moved to Seabrook Texas with his Mother. She remarried when he was around 8 years old. Reports say that Green had a troubled, angry personality from about Junior High School years onward. His Mother is said to have “had problems” and was jailed for 6 months in 2000 and he went to live with his Father back in Midland. He dropped out in 2002 while in the 10th Grade but managed to get his equivalency degree in 2003 from a Community College. Green was in trouble with the law for minor offenses of smoking, pot, alcohol consumption. It was noted on the records that he must have had trouble at home because he didn’t list either parent as a contact. Green lived with his estranged step-father for a while at some point.
Source from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/14/us/14private.html
Filed under: Abandonment, Alcoholism, Bad Children of Divorce, Courts, Custody, Mentally Ill parents, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Violence, indifferent parents
Tess Damm is the Colorado teenager who allowed her boyfriend to murder her Mother. The teenagers than put the Mother’s body in the car and partied for about a month before neighbors called authorities. Tess’s Mother was what sounds like a raging alcoholic and her boyfriend, an adopted boy from India, had a split personality. I talked briefly about Tess Damm a while back and went back to see if I could find any new information about her situation as regards to her parent’s divorce because obviously this was an impossible situation which led to tragedy.
I found an article about Tess’ Father, Michael Damm, who left her Mother, Linda Juergens, when Tess was around 1 1/2 years old.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/02/damms-father-i-dont-know-those-people/
The Father’s attitude towards his daughter was totally distant. He said that “he didn’t know those people.” As is typical in Divorced families the Father can’t handle the stress of maintaining a relationship with the Mother who is totally insane. And he simply disappears. I tend to see how this is a practical way to lead one’s life. Unfortunately, from the child’s point of view this is very destructive.
According to the article, Tess’ parents married on June 29, 1991. Tess was born a month later so obviously she was a “mistake” child. The Father walked out in September 1992. He tried to maintain a long distance relationship with his daughter and was given what looks to me like very difficult rules to follow in order to do that. For example, he had to give 30 days’ notice in order to visit. Juergens filed for divorce in April, 1999. That’s a long time to remain separated so I sort of assume that he really was having struggling with trying to maintain connection with his daughter at least.
I wonder if it’s easier if these parents just cut the cord quickly. The child then doesn’t build up any false hopes and can live with reality much better. Of course, the best option would have been if he had been given custody since it sounds like he was the more stable parent but who knows? He may have been as unstable as the Mother.
The Father at the time of the writing is now living in Wisconsin, is remarried and has more children with his current wife. He talked very coldly about his daughter’s situation which I think is the attitude that a lot of Children of D receive from the missing parent. The child must suffer the Loss like a Death but also the Rejection of being Unworthy. The Father said he hadn’t talked to her in 10 years and didn’t intend to reestablish a relationship now. At any rate, one can see the Father’s coldness being projected into the mind of a daughter who plotted and carried out her own Mother’s death. He is quoted as saying:
“I have a family, and I’m living and loving life in Wisconsin,” he said. “I moved out of that situation when (Tess) was about 2.”
He is quoted repeatedly as saying that he has moved on in life. His Mother, Tess’ Grandmother, was also interviewed as saying that the family had moved on. Tess really was worth nothing to her family. Most Children of D don’t kill their parents, but they do share a similar style relationship with one of their parents.
The great philosopher Martin Buber said that the greatest evil in the world comes not from bad deeds but from indifference.
Filed under: Abandonment, Mentally Ill parents, Stepfamilies, The Other Parents Genes, indifferent parents, separate households
Many kids experience the loss of one of the parents. The double relationships are too complicated for day to day life. The manipulations and fighting are miserable. The transferring back and forth and constant planning and arranging for meeting times. The awkward hellos and good-byes that aren’t supposed to exist in a family.
One parent leaves. Usually this is the Father. Sometimes its the Mother. Abandonment by Father is acceptable by society, abandonment by Mother is not. This generally leads to a feeling of confusion and anger for the kid, especially as an adult. There’s a subtle coldness in the eyes of these people if you talk about your parents to them. The parent is out there somewhere, irresponsible and indifferent, maybe dead, maybe not. Fathers will often summon their daughters back once they find out they are dying. I remember this happening to a friend of mine. The Father had left the family destitute and on welfare long ago. He remarried and lived in wealth with his new family, very rarely paying attention to his first three children who were left with a mother who sort of went insane. Suddenly he offered to let the girl live with the family. Turns out they needed a nurse.
The new Mickey Rourke movie Warrior shows this situation. Rourke is an aging professional Wrestler who has a heart attack and can’t wrestle anymore. He suddenly remembers that he has a daughter and he messes up with her one last time. She, of course, gets screwed one last time.
I have no idea what happens when the Mother tries to reconnect. I’ve actually never known anyone in that situation. I do remember a Meryl Streep movie about this. The Son is Gay and dying from AIDS. His Mother has abandonned him years before. Meryl makes you sympathize with her, of course. These situations always require so much sympathy, that’s the problem. There’s a grim, levelled off sense of completion if you can sympathize with a person’s guilt.
Often Divorce can make the situation work so that a relationship can develop between the missing parent and the child. This happened for me. My Father said in part he wanted to be able to connect with his kids. This was partly true and mostly a stupid manipulative thing to say. He shouldn’t have married my friend’s mother if I meant anything to him. But he used it as an excuse. And I did get to know him. And if you get to know your parent you get to know your gene pool. Sometimes that’s not desireable, sometimes it’s very useful.
I can say after the fact that I would have been better off if I hadn’t taken all that extra time to get to know him because it led ultimately to more hurt. I had to watch what he did to my mother, then I had to have it done to me, then I had to have it done to me through his wife. Once is enough. Best to cut the cord. That’s only my opinion, but my opinion comes from experience. But, I did get to know him. I do know that he really did try. I probably lost a big part of my self-respect helping him to be a parent. My feelings for him are still one of shock and indifference. I don’t think a human soul can open up that kind of a box.
Filed under: Birth Order, College Drop Out, Exemplary Children of Divorce, High School Drop Out, Mentally Ill parents, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Nutrition, School Drop Out - High School or College, creativity, self injury
Johnny Depp gave an incredible performance of an oldest Son growing up while living with a helpless, obese, single mother and younger brother in the movie: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
Probably not really good Holiday Viewing, though. Just happened to think of it right now.
Johnny Depp is a Child of D. His parents would have divorced around the time that Depp was 15. Here’s an except from his biography on Wikipedia.
Depp was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, the son of Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, Sr., a civil engineer.[3] He has one brother, Danny, and two sisters, Christie (now his personal manager) and Debbie. … The family moved frequently during Depp’s childhood, and he and his siblings lived in more than 20 different locations, settling in Miramar, Florida, in 1970. In 1978, Depp’s parents divorced. He engaged in self-harm as a child, due to the stress of dealing with family problems and his own insecurity. He has seven or eight scars from practicing self-harm. In a 1993 interview, he explained his self-injury by saying, “My body is a journal in a way. It’s like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist”.[8]
1980s
Depp’s mother bought her son a guitar when he was 12, and Depp began playing in various garage bands. His first band was in honor of his girlfriend, Meredith. A year after his parents’ divorce, Depp dropped out of high school to become a rock musician. As he once explained on Inside the Actors Studio, he attempted to go back to school two weeks later, but the principal told him to follow his dream of being a musician. …
Filed under: Mentally Ill parents, Parents and their Dates, links to articles | Tags: Add new tag
Link to article called “8 Rules for Dating My Parent” by Nina Malkin. These rules are pretty good. The article avoids talking about how to remain in kid mode while Mom and Dad exploit their Peter Pan mentality and relive datingin High School over and over again. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? (Peter Pan parents are fun and open and youthful but often sort of competitive with their kids, aren’t they?) The author doesn’t ask the kids how they actually feel about having a Parent who dates. It wouldn’t be safe for the kid to respond I suppose. But, does the child compare himself with his friends’ families who are intact? Does the kid feel like his life is more special because his homelife is more changeable (I was going to say volatile…) and kid-like? Parents who date are often much more “cool” and up to date on current trends. That might be a plus, or it might just be a shallow, immature lifestyle.
As usual, the children of parents who don’t wonder about how the child is reacting to their Dates must repress their experiences. There’s no therapy for this down the road once the child get older. There is only a superficial diagnosis of Depression, Anxiety, Anger and Lack of Trust which is mostly seen as a result of Chemical Imbalance and Bad Habits that can be reframed through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Since people who divorce a lot probably have addictions and mental illness, wouldn’t it be more to the point to help the kids who have to grow up in that situation? Why do the “Helper/Healers” in the world always seem to avoid the people who really need help? Why doesn’t this article tell the parents to start looking deeply at themselves and their own problems so that at least they won’t repeat their mistakes? The article could address how one’s Narcissicism, Instability, and Mistakes affects one’s child. Or it could address How to help little Junior whose Mom is drinking a 1/5 of Vodka or a Carton of Gallo? Just think what kinds of Dates she brings home. Just imagine what contortions go through her brain as she reads this article while in hangover mode and screaming at the kids just because her swollen head can’t handle anything but Diet Coke and Tylenol. Mostly she’s concerned with trying to remember what that strange man is doing in the house. Those are the kids who need the help.
On the plus side, most people who Mom brings home in this case probably grew up in bad situations themselves and are naturally sensitive enough to understand these principles.
This was just supposed to be a link to a reasonable blog entry about Parents of Children of D and it turned into the usual questioning of how the real problems always manage to slip by. So sorry, but this is so frustrating. Hopefully time to get back on track. Note to self: figure out how to turn off comments sections of Step-Parenting threads so as not to get distracted by said crazy situations.
Sorry I ended up butchering this article. I really did think it was good, just avoided the real problems involved in order to provide quick solutions. The parents who read this honestly will think they’ve done absolutetly everything in their powers to make things right for their kids. It’s a real trick to try to balance developing as an individual and developing as a part of a relationship. This is going to be a real distraction from the kids. In Intact families the kids don’t have to deal with their parents going through this (often they wish for it, though) and live a much more carefree inner existence.
http://www.match.com/magazine/article2.aspx?TrackingID=525061&BannerID=647430&articleid=9757
To balance out the last blog entry about conservative political mastermind Karl Rove, I’ve found an example of a liberal political mastermind in the strategist advisor for Barack Obama. David Axelrod is also a Child of Divorce.
Here’s a quote that Axelrod made of Karl Rove:
This, Axelrod says, is what Karl Rove understood about George W. Bush. “One of the reasons Bush has succeeded in two elections,” Axelrod says, “is that in his own rough-hewn way he has conveyed a sense of this is who I am, warts and all.”
The descriptions of Axelrod don’t make sense to me right now. He is said to be very involved and personable with reporters. And he is described as hunched over and exhausted. He describes himself as idealistic. And he is described as “cut-throat”. “He can do it very delicately, to the point that you may not realize he is slicing your head off.” At any rate, nobody has described him as Bubbly.
Axelrod was born in Manhattan, New York to a journalist Mother and a psychologist Father. His parents divorced when he was 8 years old.
Axelrod’s Father killed himself at Age 19. Axelrod didn’t ackowledge this for another 30 years when he is said to have written an article about Depression.
Axelrod graduated from the University of Chicago with some difficulty. Seems he had to spend an extra Semester completing courses he had left incomplete. (described in NY Times article linked to above).
Axelrod has been married since 1979 and has three children.
Although on completely different sides of the political fence both men went through severe traumas concerning their Fathers at Age 19. They have both become prominent for extreme intelligence and understanding of human nature. And they both work as Advisors in extremely successful political campaigns. Rove is described as extremely competitive and Axelrod is described as extremely aggressive at the political level. You grow up watching a Divorce, you understand the basics of human nature at a very intense scale.
Filed under: Abandonment, Bad Children of Divorce, Mentally Ill parents, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Parents and their Dates, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Suicide, Violence, money
This movie, Savage Grace, completely destroyed my week-end. It’s the most miserable story in the world. Julianne Moore plays a rich socialite nymphomaniac who is murdered by her son. It’s based on the life of a woman called Barbara Baekeland and I don’t know how much of it is true. Barbara Baekeland married and was dumped by an heir to a Plastics fortune. She developed an abnormally close relationship with her son which can probably qualify in modern terms as Parental Alienation Syndrome, along with Incest and just plain old creep out. I sort of wonder if Incest (between parent and child at any rate) is sometimes connected with Parental Alienation Syndrome.
The Son, Antony Baekeland, was Gay and his Mother seduced him in order to try to convert him to normal, not that she’d have a clue what that was. The Father left Anthony to take care of his Mother alone as she descended into depressions and eventually a suicide attempt. There is a really great line in the movie where Anthony is writing to his father telling him that his only inheritance was taking care of his mother. Really interesting line in a family where inheritance and money seem to have caused so much trouble. The Father apparently did nothing to help his Son, typical behavior.
According to what I read on the Internet (sorry forget to get any links) Tony (Antony) was released from jail eventually and went to live with his Mother’s Mother. After a week he stabbed her. So, he was permanently destroyed. He eventually committed suicide in jail.
I have no idea how closely the movie follows what people know about the real story but I’ve found that movies are highly fictionalized. I don’t know if I recommend this to anyone who grew up in a difficult Divorce or suffered Incest or Suicides. Unlike the movie “About A Boy” which is partly about a boy witnessing his Mother’s suicide attempt, there’s no redemption to this story, made all the worse because it’s based on real life. Some of the reviews that I’ve read say that they don’t even believe it could be a real story, har har. The movie is based on a book by the same title.
Filed under: Abduction, Alcoholism, Bad Children of Divorce, Birth Order, Custody, Mentally Ill parents, Parents and their Dates, Suicide, money, self-absorbed parents, separate households
Marlon Brando’s troubled Son, Christian, passed away yesterday in Los Angeles, California. He had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Christian was 49 years old. May he Rest in Peace.
Christian was the eldest of Brando’s nine children. His Mother, Anna Kashfi, was also an actress. She separated from Brando when Christian was 5 months old and the couple divorced on Apr. 22, 1959 (can’t vouch for any dates here). The couple remained in a custody dispute over Christian until 1972 when Kashfi abducted the 13 year boy and took him to Mexico. She was sent to jail and subsequently lost all chance for custody. His Mother had drug and alcohol problems.
Christian dropped out of High School and held minor acting jobs. As can be expected he had emotional problems and ended up killing his sister Cheyenne’s boyfriend while arguing over whether the boyfriend had beaten his pregnant half-sister. He spent 5 years in jail for the murder. Cheyenne gave birth to the baby but hanged herself at Age 25. Christian was recently divorced for violent behavior to his wife and her daughter.
This is a description of his childhood from www.astrotheme.com. (Date of parents’ separation is different from one mentioned in obituary in newspaper (www.mercurynews.com):
Kashfi turned to barbiturates and alcohol and the couple divorced a year after Christian’s birth in May 1959. Christian was passed between the two as their relationship became more and more hostile and abusive. The author Nellie Bly claimed that “When the Brandos quarreled, Anna displayed a ‘frightening’ rage,” and that “Anna left baby Christian alone in her car parked on Wilshire Boulevard while she confronted Brando in his office, ‘beating at him with her fists, in a frenzy of rage.” There was a protracted custody battle between Kashfi and Brando until he eventually won custody of Christian aged 13 after an incident when Christian was taken out of school to Mexico by Kashfi without Brando’s consent.
Christian had little good contact with his father, being raised by nannies and servants, moving between Hollywood and the private island near Tahiti. A reluctant witness to his father’s sexual exploits and bizarre behavior, Christian complained that:
“The family kept changing shape, I’d sit down at the breakfast table and say, “Who are you?””
Filed under: Alcoholism, Books, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Mentally Ill parents, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Raised by non-relatives, Uncategorized
Augusten Burroughs wrote about the very popular story about his life after his parents’ divorce in Running with Scissors. His Mother was mentally ill and with the aid of her psychiatrist went completely over the edge. Burroughs went to live with the psychiatrist and his family and then bounced back and forth between the Psychiatrist’s house and his Mother’s. Haven’t read the book but saw the movie which I didn’t like very much. Crazy families are really difficult to portray “realistically.” Especially considering how much was going on in Burrough’s life at the same time. The absent Father, the crazy Mother, the crazy Family, the obnoxious authoritarian psychiatry, the molestation, and the Coming Out. It should have been filmed in the format of a perpetually exploding bomb.
Here’s a Burroughs quote from a Washington Post article about the book and talking about his childhood:
“I thought people would be bored by it, honestly,” Burroughs says. “Bored or just . . . so put off. You can’t even really describe the book without it seeming X-rated. I spent a lot of years not telling people about my childhood, because I was embarrassed or ashamed. People who grew up in nice families and went to Ivy League schools — to me that’s what’s shocking. I’m riveted by stories like that: ‘Really? You still talk to people you knew in high school? You’re on speaking terms with both your parents? Tell me more.’ “
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A19023-2002Jul29¬Found=true)
Burroughs’ Mother is a poet and his Father was head of the Philosophy Department at University of Massachusetts (now passed). Burroughs has one older brother. Age 13 Burroughs was sodomized by the 33 year old guy who lived behind the psychiatrist’s house. At some point soon after, Burroughs dropped out of High School. Eventually he started working for an advertising company and worked his way up into Copy Writing. He developed serious addictions problems and wrote about his alcoholism in Dry.
At Age 19, changed name from Chris Robinson to Augusten Burroughs. Around Age 36, publishes memoir. Has written a number of best-sellers since.
The Psychiatrist’s family sued for mis-representation in 2007.
