Difficult behavior

Over the weekend I did something to the muscles over my right hip and could barely move for several days. Monday was definitely the worse, with yesterday being a little bit better, but that was probably because I didn't really try to do all that much. Today there is still a little twinge, but I'm functional again. Yesterday, when I was doing all that much except sitting uncomfortably, I binge read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Yes, I'm a bit late to the party since it was published in 2017, but I rarely pick up super popular books at the time they were popular. I don't actually know why I put it on my library reserve list, but I think I came across a synopsis and it sounded interesting.

I ended up really enjoying the book. I really liked the character of Eleanor, including her disdain for texting shortcuts. If you don't know the book, the character of Eleanor is the story of a person with significant past trauma including being in care for much of her young life. There were a couple of paragraphs which stopped me in my tracks. Here they are:

" It was surprising that he [her one friend, Raymond] should bother with me, especially given the unpleasant circumstances in which he'd found me after the concert. Whenever I'd been sad or upset before, the relevant people in my life would simply call my social worker and I'd be moved somewhere else. Raymond hadn't phoned anyone or asked an outside agency to intervene. He'd elected to look after me himself. I'd been pondering this, and concluded that there must be some people for whom difficult behavior wasn't a reason to end their relationship with you. If they liked you -- and, I remembered, Raymond and I had agreed that we were pals now -- then, it seemed, they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, or upset, or behaving in very challenging ways. This was something of a revelation.

I wondered if that's what it would be like in a family -- if you had parents, or as sister, say, who would be there, no matter what. It wasn't that you could take them granted, as such -- heaven knows, nothing can be taken for granted in this life -- it was simply that you would know, almost unthinkingly, that they'd be there if you needed them, no matter how bad things got. I'm not prone to envy, as a rule, but I must confess I felt a twinge when I thought about this. Envy was a minor emotion, however, in comparison to the sorrow I felt at never having a chance to experience this... what was it? Unconditional love, I suppose." (pp. 236-237)

Difficult behavior wasn't a reason to end a relationship with you. That was the line that got me. Every single foster and adoptive parent should read these lines. Hurt and scared children do hurtful and scary things. Full stop. It is not done on purpose. It is not done to make the parents' lives unpleasant. It is not done to hurt the parents. Pain begets pain. That's the long and the short of it. Connection and safety are what allow the hurt child to begin to regulate. Consequences and opposition and fear from the parent will ramp up the fear and hurt and make the challenging behaviors worse. It is actually a very simple formula, but also one that I admit is not so simple to carry out if the parents are unaware of their own assumptions and reactions and fears.

As much as I loved that part of the book, I was annoyed by another part. There is a backstory of abuse, and once the abuse was being looked into the parent began homeschooling the children to hide it. Forgive me if I pause and heave a great big, annoyed sigh at this point. Homeschooling, especially recently, has been blamed for being a vehicle to hide abuse. The trouble is, the research and statistics don't back up that claim. It is something that a great many people still do not understand, so it becomes an easy scapegoat for the failure of societal checks and balances. Because in the story, it was not homeschooling that was at fault, it was the failure of the social service agencies to investigate when troubles began to be noticed. If public school was a failsafe educational venue for stopping abuse, then no child in the public school system would ever be a victim. I'm not saying that there are not children who are homeschooled who are also abused, because it is a crime that crosses all sections of society. What I am saying is that the exaggerated fear mongering regarding homeschooling is just that... exaggerated. It is annoying to find such a harmful stereotype in an otherwise very good book. 

If you are one of the three other people who have yet to read this, I strongly encourage you to pick it up. It is a very good story.