Enabling and Crippling Our Children

They look for a little bit, and then they get tired of looking and they give up.
They go back to their parents’ houses, lamenting that there are no jobs. 
No one wants to hire them. The parents take them in, pat their backs.
Make a million excuses like the hundreds of times they did when they were school-aged.

Keeping them home, to be their companions.
Keeping them home to babysit.
Pretending to home-school them, so they could help 
sell vacuum cleaners door to door.
Making excuses, pretending they are okay with their forty-year-old children 

Who cannot read or write or create a resume that will not go into a circular file.
Creating unhappy grown up children who are eager to spend the rest of their lives
With the parents who made it easy for them to
not get the schooling they needed
To succeed in any kind of world out of their parents’ fishbowl pond.

It is so sad to me, so terribly sad that some children 
miss fifteen to thirty days of school in one semester.
By the time they return, they are so lost and demoralized, 
the only haven they have
Is the parents who kept them from learning 
what could have helped them become independent
and maybe proud. 
So they sit in their parents’ basements, 
playing video games, feeling apathetic, depressed, and lonely. 

But what happens when their enabling parents are no longer alive?
Who will take care of them?
Do any of these enablers think about this as they cripple their children
And make excuses for them for all the wrong reasons?
Copyright © | Year Posted 2019


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Date: 4/10/2019 6:39:00 PM
It makes one wonder why they even have children? They don't spend time with them; they don't teach them; leave it all up to schools when some things, parent's can teach and nurture in a better way. Too many people today don't have their priorities straight.
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Caren Krutsinger
Date: 4/10/2019 10:59:00 PM
They have them because it is "the thing to do". Ha!
Date: 4/10/2019 4:06:00 PM
You have pointed out yet another painful manifestation of how each generation seems to make things worse---until some crisis comes along to galvanize us and get us back on course... I remember how lost the ''3rd generation' of settlers was in Israel (in the 1960's) until the Six-Day War (1967) woke them up, giving them a chance to shine and to make their parents and grandparents so proud...Somehow, some way, what you've written of will pass too, as unlikely as it may seem now... ~ gw
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Caren Krutsinger
Date: 4/10/2019 11:00:00 PM
I am fearful, as I have never before been. Retaining optimism is more difficult now.
Date: 4/10/2019 12:34:00 AM
"But what happens when their enabling parents are no longer alive?/ Who will take care of them?" I wonder about this, too...
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Caren Krutsinger
Date: 4/10/2019 5:31:00 AM
I truly do wonder. And of course, there is a particular person I know who has done this to her sons, who are 46 and 48 and have never left home, and will never want to now.
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