Question about child sexual abuse

[Witsec5]

The courtship/rape thread has me wondering about something my sister and me are dealing with and we have been searching for answer. When we were little, my dad had an Air Force buddy who had fallen on hard times. The man had been hospitalized in a mental institution for pedophilia which is what they did then, thinking that pedophilia was something that was curable. My parents took the man in because "he had no place to go." This gave him access to my sister who at 3 or 4 was his preferred age. I was too much of a spitfire to mess with even at 6 or 7 so he didn't bother with me but I was witness to what he did to my sister. My parents found out about the abuse after they heard us talking about it and promptly kicked the man out of the house. What happened a few years later is what puzzles us. The pedophile was a photographer and my parents had him over to take our family portrait and also for dinner. My sister hid under the bed and was called out by our mom for disrespecting the guest. We both ended up at the barbeque dinner. I argued with the SOB the whole time and was behaving like what my mom would have described as a "pill". My sister said that that was the day she learned that she did not matter and her grades and behavior declined since that day. She did not finish high school and took the proficiency exam instead. Today she is having difficulty finding a job because of the job market and her lack of education.

Anyway, for the life of us, we cannot understand what motivated our parents to act the way they did. They are both deceased. We did get an apology from our mother before she died and she was crying saying she didn't know. Our father continued to be friends with this guy until the year before he died. My sister confronted him and told her that it was hurtful that he was continuing the friendship so my dad finally stopped talking to the man. I have studied psychology and am a school psych. (and this is part of the reason) but in all of my studies I cannot understand this. My parents were not evil and if someone had told them of the hurt they caused they would have been appalled and sorry. I don't think they had any understanding of children's needs or feelings though. I am also wondering if my mother might have had a mental illness because her perceptions were so naive slightly off-kilter. I also think that she may have had a borderline personality disorder because if I ever disagreed or argued with her on anything, she would go into meltdown mode. My dad was a loving man who no coping skills and tended to solve problems with his fists or by using substances. But that does not explain. The only thing that helps us understand a little was reading about the Boy Scouts and how they protected their pedophiles back in the 60's especially. We were wondering if this was just a different era where these people were treated as if they were caught with pot and people wanted to look the other way to keep the person from losing their lives. But the person who ended up with a permanently altered life is my sister and she will never be the same. It impacted her choice of husband, career, everything. She does not trust people and the only reason we have any connection is due to this shared experience. My son asked why she hadn't gone to college and had such a hard time finding work. I told him the story and he was appalled and at once understood. If a 17-year-old can understand immediately, what was up with our parents?

[Witsec5]

BTW, your insights would really help my sister. We are too close to this to understand. I could call her today and talk to her about it.

[thetabmeister]

The courtship/rape thread has me wondering about something my sister and me are dealing with and we have been searching for answer. When we were little, my dad had an Air Force buddy who had fallen on hard times. The man had been hospitalized in a mental institution for pedophilia which is what they did then, thinking that pedophilia was something that was curable. My parents took the man in because "he had no place to go." This gave him access to my sister who at 3 or 4 was his preferred age. I was too much of a spitfire to mess with even at 6 or 7 so he didn't bother with me but I was witness to what he did to my sister. My parents found out about the abuse after they heard us talking about it and promptly kicked the man out of the house. What happened a few years later is what puzzles us. The pedophile was a photographer and my parents had him over to take our family portrait and also for dinner. My sister hid under the bed and was called out by our mom for disrespecting the guest. We both ended up at the barbeque dinner. I argued with the SOB the whole time and was behaving like what my mom would have described as a "pill". My sister said that that was the day she learned that she did not matter and her grades and behavior declined since that day. She did not finish high school and took the proficiency exam instead. Today she is having difficulty finding a job because of the job market and her lack of education.

Anyway, for the life of us, we cannot understand what motivated our parents to act the way they did. They are both deceased. We did get an apology from our mother before she died and she was crying saying she didn't know. Our father continued to be friends with this guy until the year before he died. My sister confronted him and told her that it was hurtful that he was continuing the friendship so my dad finally stopped talking to the man. I have studied psychology and am a school psych. (and this is part of the reason) but in all of my studies I cannot understand this. My parents were not evil and if someone had told them of the hurt they caused they would have been appalled and sorry. I don't think they had any understanding of children's needs or feelings though. I am also wondering if my mother might have had a mental illness because her perceptions were so naive slightly off-kilter. I also think that she may have had a borderline personality disorder because if I ever disagreed or argued with her on anything, she would go into meltdown mode. My dad was a loving man who no coping skills and tended to solve problems with his fists or by using substances. But that does not explain. The only thing that helps us understand a little was reading about the Boy Scouts and how they protected their pedophiles back in the 60's especially. We were wondering if this was just a different era where these people were treated as if they were caught with pot and people wanted to look the other way to keep the person from losing their lives. But the person who ended up with a permanently altered life is my sister and she will never be the same. It impacted her choice of husband, career, everything. She does not trust people and the only reason we have any connection is due to this shared experience. My son asked why she hadn't gone to college and had such a hard time finding work. I told him the story and he was appalled and at once understood. If a 17-year-old can understand immediately, what was up with our parents?

As a survivor, along with my siblings, of childhood sexual abuse myself, t0r0sebud1, you have my sympathies. As far as what you're trying to understand--what you need explaining--perhaps I shouldn't have commented because all I can offer is bewilderment on my part for the way your parents reacted. I will say that if you are convinced of the part I bolded above (and I'm certainly not trying to convince you otherwise), I feel that that will further complicate matters as far as trying to decipher why they did what they did. Inviting a known abuser back into the home doesn't make sense, and I personally don't understand why someone would need to be told about the hurt it would cause in order to know that. You would think they would just "know." Sadly, this is a common scenario, as I can attest to, especially when the abuser is a family member (grand- or great-grandfather, uncle, brother, etc). Parents seem to say "stop" but then don't draw protective boundaries around the child. Smh

[Hisey]

I can tell you what I think, for what it's worth.

This is just my humble opinion, but I have found that when horrible things happen, people often lack the ability to absorb or understand it. They minimize it in their mind. Not everyone has the ability to face things outright, just as they are (though it sounds like you do, I do too). Many can't face the horror that is pedophilia, so they rationalize it by thinking "It couldn't have been that bad." "She's forgotten about it." "She seems fine, so it's all in the past." "He told me he is done with that stuff now, so it's OK to let him around the kids."

Since you were a kid, you may not have known about any conversations this man had with your mom or dad. Maybe he told them he'd stopped "messing" with kids. Maybe he'd told them your sister was exagerating. Maybe he'd told them that he'd been to counseling and figured out how to stop.

It's kind of like this political debate about the definition of rape. These male, upper-class politicians have never sat through a rape survivor's group, and listened to women cry. They've never done a pelvic exam on a rape victim. They have probably never been overpowered by anyone in their lives. They know rape is "bad" but they don't have any idea of the horror of it.

Maybe your parents--particularly if they were limited in other ways--just didn't have a sense of what your sister had been through. They mentally rated it as a 3 instead of a 10 on the scale of bad things.

Finally, pedophiles abuse all sorts of children, not just those who aren't spitfires. Pedophiles can easily overcome any child they want to. Most likely, this gross and disgusting man probably just preferred 3-year olds. You wouldn't want to do anything (I know you wouldn't) that might imply or suggest to your sister that her personality had something to do with what happened to her.

[kb2]

I don't think you're too close to the situation--I think you have a better perspective on it than most people. I think your parents did the wrong thing because they couldn't see past their own experiences--of not being abused, of having a friend I'm sure they had good times with outside of abusing their child, of believing that their friend could change and go on to do good things in the world and that condemnation from them might prevent anything good from coming out of his life. I think a lot of people think child molesters can be rehabilitated (by prison, by religion, by psychotherapy, by pills) because it makes them feel safer. Accepting that the person they were helping's main contribution to the world would be inflicting life-long pain onto multiple people that no amount of good later-life decisions could ever make up for is a dark realization that apparently, the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts, a former pastor of mine, and numerous others have been unable to come to terms with.

ETA: This is my unqualified, made-up, unfounded, and possibly unhelpful theory.

[penguinagogo]

as someone who went through perhaps a similar experience at a similar age to your sister my heart goes out to you both, I can offer no help with the disconnect though.

I naively spoke to my mum about the abuser and his actions in kids terms (he was a family friend) one night when she put me to bed and she was silent. She went and talked to my father, then came back to me and told me it was alright, cuddled me to sleep. I dont know quite what happened, they went to the police but I was never involved in his trial and conviction, when other offenses were uncovered he went to trial over those. The abuser vanished from our orbit that night and was never mentioned again

What am greatful for and respect is that my parents let me forget, let me be a normal child as much as possible. The damage I had suffered in terms of physical issues they helped me hide from extended family and school (which was probably the difficult choice). I had always been a happy bright kid, they let me go back to that. And oddly enough I did 'forget' until I was a teen - I dont mean I repressed things, I could always recall what had happened but I didnt think about it or understand fully what it represented until I was a teenager, which wasnt great but by then I had some ability to process things. Despite a tough time physically and later emotionally, my parents encouraged me in everything. I have eventually been able to build a life, career, relationships and even have children though issues regarding the abuse still occasionally bite me I have resilience to deal with them, and a huge part of this is down to knowing I am loved and valuable.

I was shaking with anger as I read your account of the abuser being welcomed into your family as a guest- and can only rail against such a repeated betrayal by your parents. I have no idea what could have motivated them - was it a community thing? did the abuser have some power or position? or did they believe the myth that children forget everything about their early life at 4-5? even if any or all of these are true there is still no justification for what they did, which compounded your sisters abuse

I don't have any answers for you or your sister sadly. The authors of it might apologize and explain but answers don't repair damage and it can never be negated or made right. You probably don't need me to tell you this, but show her shes loved listened to and valued by you in a way your parents didn't , and that someone knows the truth.

btw - I am glad your son had the empathy and understanding of the possible effects of abuse you describe - for if everyone had that incidents of abuse could not happen. I hope to raise my children the same way

[Witsec5]

I do not think we will ever understand. Your points are well taken though. I think denial was a major part of it and also my parents did not allow us to express any negative feelings. It's almost like the Duggars insistence that everything be perfect on the outside. Hence my fascination with fundies and the Duggars in particular. My mother was more concerned about how things looked to company if we were misbehaving than about our feelings. I remember one time when I attached myself to the Avon lady, a very warm person named Rose. My mother commented that it was embarrassing because it looked to the outside world like I never got any love or affection." (Well if the shoe fit!!!) Even a pedophile's feelings about our family were more important than her own children's well-beings. This is the sad truth. BTW, I do think the sick fuck preferred 3-year-olds for whatever reason. But in my fantasy, I would like to think that I would have bit his dick off if he tried to mess with me but I do remember being the in the room when he was giving my sister a bath.

BTW, what kind of idiot parent allows a pedophile to give their children a bath?!

It is also sad that my son (who does not remember his grandmother) has this idea in his head that my mother was a horrible person. This is her legacy and this is how most of her grandchildren remember her because they know the story and they were young when she died. She was pretty bad and was ill equipped to parent a goldfish (or care for a potted plant) much less take care of a child-- but she had her good moments too.

[Witsec5]

Thanks kb2. This is an institutional systems problem as well as a family issue and I'm glad it's all over the news--the released transcripts from the Boy Scout files especially. I think it just opened the whole thing all over again for us.

[mstee]

I cannot understand how your parents let him in their house again, and I am sorry for what you and your sister went through. The only thing that came to mind when I read your story was about how people live with others (say a parent or grandparent) and know that they are abusing their children and they don't intervene. My mom was abused in all ways, along with her brother, by her grandfather that lived with them. Neither her parents nor her grandma stood up to this man, and while he didn't abuse the kids right in front of the rest of the family members, they knew it was going on and they knew what a scary man he was. I also have a cousin who was suffering at the hands of her step father, and her mother chose him over her. So while your sister's abuser was not family, maybe he was a close enough friend for your parents to "rationalize" the situation and forgive and forget. A lot of people also have the idea that if a child is young enough, a situation will not damage them long-term, or they will just forget. And if your mom was concerned with image, then maybe her forgetting about it and pretending all is alright was the only was she could cope.

[Minerva]

I'm very sorry all of that happened. If you ask me, in their minds, your parents minimized the emotional and psychological effects of the abuse because they felt responsible for it happening. If they spent years telling themselves that this harmed your sister as much as a common childhood experience such as being stung by a bee or falling off your bike, I could see them not thinking anything of inviting the pedophile over, just as they wouldn't think twice about showing you the bike you fell off of. Were your parents reluctant to admit their mistakes and apologize in general? I've got people in my life who react to trauma they've helped create the way I described, and they're not into apologizing or admitting mistakes.

[emmiedahl]

I wish I could understand why these things happen, but it seems to be a generational thing. My grandfather allowed a colleague who was a known pedophile to come to his home when my mother was in high school. When my mother expressed dismay because my aunt was 10-ish and in the home at the time, my grandfather told my aunt to hide in her room or go to a friend's house.

My grandfather is dead now and is somewhat of a saint in our family, but this story has always stuck out to me. WHY? Why bring someone like that to your home when you have a child? My grandfather was so liberal and such a kick-ass, empowering father to his girls. It makes no sense when I compare that story to what I know of him.

I believe that part of the problem was that there was less awareness of pedophilia at the time. Many people believed that a man could "make a mistake" or somehow even be seduced by a small child. There was a taint about the victim, like she maybe wanted it a bit. Like it was her fault for letting it happen. I think my grandfather believed his "good" little daughters were somehow too good to be molested. My aunt ended up leaving the home with my mother to run some fake errand, and then my grandfather never invited the coworker over again.

I hope this story helps because I have nothing else to say except that I am sorry. One of my sisters, a younger one, was abused by someone and the powerlessness I feel is so horrible. Why couldn't I protect her? What can I do to help her heal now that she is an adult? It is horrible for me to deal with so I can only imagine how she feels.

[Witsec5]

I love the empathy here. And I'm not being facetious.

My sister would really love it here and she feels the support. Too bad she does not care about fundies. Otherwise, she might join.

[awmom]

I'm so sorry this happened to you and your sister. I'm a therapist who specializes in working with sexually abused children and I can say that the way caregivers respond and protect (or don't protect) children is one of the most important factors in determining whether and how children are able to recover. Being forced to continue to interact politely with the abuser is so incredibly damaging. I wish that it were a generational thing, but it's 2012 now and this type of situation still happens (though of course many parents are totally protective/appropriate/supportive of their children). I have thought a lot about why an otherwise loving caregiver would so disregard their child's safety and experience and here is what I have come up with:

1. A history of incest. I have seen otherwise loving mothers who left their children unsupervised with registered sex offenders including the person/people who abused them as a child. They always talk about "everyone deserves a second chance" and most especially "well, I thought it was just me, I didn't think he would do that to anyone else." I think this has to do with unresolved self-blame and the unchallenged thought (so common among sexual abuse victims) that "it was something about me" that caused the abuse rather than something about HIM. Incest is such a supremely invalidating experience that it can leave people unable to trust themselves and, as a result, incredibly vulnerable to manipulation by the same or different offenders.

2. An unrealistic idea of what offenders are like. As a society, we tend to see sex offenders as being absolutely evil, untreatable, bad bad bad people with no redeeming qualities. The problem with this is that when someone who seemed like a real nice guy is found to have sexually abused a child, it can be very difficult for people to place that nice guy they know into the category of "evil sex offender" and to believe that they have been duped and manipulated all along, so instead they decide there must have been some mistake, it can't have been that bad, he just "made a mistake" one time and deserves a second chance etc. etc. etc.

3. A general societal disregard for the rights and feelings of children. I honestly think that many people do not believe that children experience emotions like adults do. Just the fact that spanking is still so common should be evidence of that. I have so many parents tell me "I think I'm more upset about the abuse than my child is," to which I find a gentle way to say "I'm pretty sure that's not true."

This is all just based on my experience and I don't know if it will be helpful to you. The reality is there is no excuse for what your parents did but sometimes it does help to bring some peace when you can at least puzzle it out. If you have never gone to counseling, I highly recommend finding a therapist who does Cognitive Processing Therapy and checking it out. It's hard to believe that talking about something so awful could help but it really can.

[awmom]

This is a really great article talking about some of the reasons why otherwise reasonable adults fail to protect children from sexual abuse: http://www.stopitnow.org/press-release- ... sentencing

[Guest Anonymous]

People who know child sex abuse is going on or has gone on and don't do anything about it are evil. No excuses. They're evil. Your parents knew and kicked the guy out, but then allowed him back into your lives and even got on your sister's case for refusing to be around her abuser. Evil, hateful, vile, and all the justifying you can try isn't going to make them anything but that. It's nicer to think that evilness is caused by a mental illness, but sometimes people are just horrible people. I was abused most of my life, and I won't even try to make excuses for the parent who failed to protect me and chose to abuse me.

I am a mom, and anyone who tries to say my young children won't remember if something bad happens in their lives are immediately dismissed from our lives. Events have a chain reaction. If I beat the tar out of one of my children today, that will make it harder for her to bond with me tonight. She might forgive me and cuddle, but there's been harm done that has put a kink in things for us both. If someone hurts one of them and I let that person stay around, it places my children below my friendship with someone else. Good parents will not take risks with people who hurt kids. There is no such thing as a debt being paid for child abuse. If you want respect and friends, don't make the choice to hurt kids. Those who ignore abuse and force victims to make friends with abusers are guilty of abuse too. I have a very firm opinion on this, and this is the one thing I don't forgive, and I will not compromise.

Abusers are evil. Those who look the other way are evil. Those who force kids to be around their abusers are evil. Period.

[eohiken]

Deep, deep seated denial. That's what happened to my father's family. Lovely people, honestly. They just couldn't level the idea of his pedophilia, with having known him his whole life, yada yada. So when my mother took him to court for the molestation, it was lumped into her being a horrible hateful shrew. They even encouraged me to reconnect with him as an adult after having been estranged for years. That incident was neatly packed away into recessed of their brains, buried in doubt and history.

Fast forward years later, he was convicted of purchasing and collecting a fuckton of child porn and imprisoned. It was a surprise, I'm not kidding.

[Hane]

The explanation "Things were looked at differently X years ago" frosts me. Back in 1970, a parole officer came to my college to speak to my Human Behavior and Sexuality class. He emphatically stated that pedophiles, in his experience, had a 100% rate of recidivism, and that jail time and counseling did NOTHING to change their orientation.

I cannot help thinking of the way the Catholic Church has traditionally--and even to this day--thought of the concept of "scandal." For example, my mother was taught that it would be OK for an "unprepared" person (=person with sins on his/her soul who hadn't been to confession) to receive Communion if not doing so would cause "scandal." AKA "gossip that would make the situation look bad." It's all about hushing bad things up to make the institution look good. Years ago, John Paul II wasn't told about widespread child sexual abuse because the bishops thought "it would break his heart."

In a recent news story (sorry--can't remember the names involved), it was learned that an Englishman honored by the Catholic Church for his charitable work was found guilty of child sexual abuse. The Anglican Church demanded that the honor be rescinded, but the Roman Catholic Church insisted that the honor was a lifelong one.

It's all about "Adults are more important than kids." About "Kids aren't real people yet."

[mypsychoticself]

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I figured I could share my story.

When I was in high school, a close friend told me that she had been raped. she was going through a really hard time, had started cutting herself, and had to hide the fact that she was seeing a therapist from her parents. I cared about what she was going through and really wanted to help her, but I couldn't think about it constantly. It's not that I would forget, but I would say hurtful things without thinking about how she felt. I wasn't connecting my own behavior to her feelings. It took me months to train myself to stop.

It's possible that your parents were doing something similar. They may have known how your sister felt, but not seen the relationship between her feelings and their behavior.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

[boysmom]

The only thing i can think of is that maybe they didn't think your sister remembered because she had been so young.

Even if that is true though, if someone hurt my child like that I'd hate them myself and wouldn't want to see them, let alone expect my child to see them. So that part is confusing as well.

It is true though that in the past people didn't have an understanding of pedophilia like we do today. No one knew just how bad the devastation was, for one. And people did think that a cure was possible. Nowadays it's well known that the vast majority of pedophiles will re-offend and there's not much that can be done to prevent it. Which is really, really sad when you think about it, for all parties involved. I'm sorry your family had to go through that. :(

[2xx1xy1JD]

I'm incapable of fully understanding how people can disregard the needs of their own children.

That said, I have seen a sort of "splitting" in people that I know. In one case, the mother of a little girl who was molested by the mother's father was devastated when she found out about the abuse. There was no doubt that the little girl was extremely loved and cherished, and the parents were actually quite protective (which ironically put her at risk, since they didn't trust outside babysitters, only family). The mother, however, subsequently revealed that she remembered an episode years earlier where her father had been accused of sexually assaulting his wife's sister, and that it had all been hushed up. I know this woman well, but to this day, I can't really understand how she allowed her daughter to be put at risk. All I can say is that she was both a very loving mother, and a mother who was incapable of facing reality and stepping up to protect her daughter until the full truth smacked her in the face. She had also grown up with a toxic family, to the point that she was surrounded with denial and it literally became impossible and unthinkable for her to express her own opinion or challenge her parents.

[JesusFightClub]

I don't know how helpful this will be, but I figured I could share my story.

When I was in high school, a close friend told me that she had been raped. she was going through a really hard time, had started cutting herself, and had to hide the fact that she was seeing a therapist from her parents. I cared about what she was going through and really wanted to help her, but I couldn't think about it constantly. It's not that I would forget, but I would say hurtful things without thinking about how she felt. I wasn't connecting my own behavior to her feelings. It took me months to train myself to stop.

It's possible that your parents were doing something similar. They may have known how your sister felt, but not seen the relationship between her feelings and their behavior.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

That makes a lot of sense. When SIL was murdered, people forgot all the time because my issues ain't theirs. And I would make jokes to Bro like "I'm going to kill you for that" then we'd both freeze, realising what I just said. At first, there were a lot of moments where that happened.

People would ask me absentmindedly "How's [sIL]?" and I would say "Still dead". :cry: In retrospect I shouldn't have done that. It's not really fair on them.

But this is something different, I think. The wee girl hiding under the bed and being told to come out, and inviting him round, I think they wanted to pretend it didn't happen. I feel very sorry for them both, her and her sister.

[snarkbillie]

I was molested by a family member. My mother did nothing really when I told her except punish me. I realize now that she was also probably molested by this same family member and was also probably punished for telling. When I was a young adult I found out that he had molested 3 generations of our family and that nothing was ever done. I cut ties with all of them. Until the day he died they were still giving him access to children. I called the police and tried to get them to investigate but they told me that unless I had proof he was doing something wrong "right now" that they couldn't do anything. My own experiences were "too long ago" to do anything about. I never let my kids meet him. I feel like I'm breaking the cycle of abuse that has been in my family for ages. It's often a stigma that's attached to me though because people do not understand why I can't "forgive" my family. I have trouble explaining that it is not about forgiveness. I am protecting my children. The family member who molested me died recently and my family is trying to contact me to "reconnect" but I refuse. They still to.this.day. make excuses for the person who molested me. I can't have children around monsters like that. I can't.

[Austin]

I love the empathy here. And I'm not being facetious.

My sister would really love it here and she feels the support. Too bad she does not care about fundies. Otherwise, she might join.

I hope she'll stop by anyway, if she wants. I don't care about fundies, either. I think of FJ as more of a watchdog of extremism, particularly right-wing extremism. I couldn't pick a Maxwell out of a lineup with a gun to my head, so I don't think you have to have any real strong interest in individual fundies to enjoy FJ.

I won't comment too much on this as many good things have already been shared, but human ability to compartmentalize and deny the truth is astounding.

[isarhenne]

I think most people still think that children are not fully independent people, by independent I mean they have their own feelings and they need their own private space, and also time alone. Children are still considered mere extensions of their parents, therefore cannot feel differently from their parents, and are more like possessions or pets (it sound mean, but I think it's true for a lot of people)

One of my closest family members abused me, physically, sexually and emotionally for several years during my childhood and teenage years, last time i remember he molested me when I was 20, in front of my mother AND my boyfriend at the time. I called him out right there but neither my mother nor my boyfriend said anything, nor did they ever mention the situation again. My mother witnessed over 100 situations (if not more) (it was over the timespan of 20 years, until I moved out) when I was abused by him, but never said anything to me or to anyone, when I screamed or run away crying hysterically (as a child) no one came to comfort me, I heard him laugh out loud in the room next door, while my mother stayed with him, of course.

I cannot tell anyone in my family, because I'm already marked as the "crazy one". Nobody would believe me anyway, not even my mother, although she witnessed so many things. He is a extremely intelligent and manipulative, my whole extended family worships him, because he has made a lot of money and is very successful.

What I wanted to say is that witnesses of such horrible things are traumatised themselves and denial helps them to cope with it, otherwise they would have a breakdown.

also: children = extensions of their parents => if the parents are not traumatized by the situation, then the child is not either, it will forget pretty soon.

[Witsec5]

I agree with you isarhenne about people thinking that children are not fully functioning. When I divorced and my son and me were really struggling, I had thought I had protected him from the worst of his father's bipolar illness. I should have left earlier but I had been trained to believe that marriage was forever. I dated briefly afterward but that man's immaturity impacted my son as well so I finally wised up and decided to have no men in my son's life until he was grown. Lucky that my son expresses himself (he has a very strong personality, he has never put up anything, and he is often right in his opinions.) I do listen to him and hear him out.

I have one more year and then I can date again so if I make a huge blunder it's on me. I know it's an extreme attitude but I realized that even I in my wisdom could have blinders on as well. Before the immature guy, I went out with a guy who had a collection of films about young Asian men who were just coming of age. I confronted the guy on it and remarked that his movie preferences and some of the things he said looked really bad to a mom with a then 12-year-old son and it was one of the reasons the guy was dropped by me. So now when I date if I make an error in choosing a man, it's on me only.