Dear Doug: Monster Boy
Dear Doug:
My husband of 16 years and I have five well-behaved children. Everything was fine between our families until his brother married “Lenore”and they had a son, now 5 years old.
At family events, this little boy continuously bites, pulls hair and otherwise abuses his cousins. When we try to intervene, he goes after us. When we ask Lenore to use some discipline, she puts down her cigarette and tells him to stop. He laughs and continues abusing others.
The whole family has tried, but she makes excuses and insists that being stricter will bring on greater violence. When my husband finally told her that he will discipline the boy if she doesn’t, she became irate, threatened us with legal action and left obscene messages on our voice mail. Now our aging parents want us all together for the holidays. My children are begging not to go and I don’t want to put them”or ourselves”in harm’s way. What should we do?
Signed,
Aunt-in-law to a monster
. . . . .
Dear Aunt,
Other columnists might point out that the boy is crying out for discipline and that the parents (just where is his Dad in all this, anyway?) are abdicating. Such columnists would suggest parenting classes and behavioral counseling. They would completely ignore the fact that the combination of smoking, rearing an out-of-control child, making threats and mouthing obscenities reveals a very high likelihood that Lenore has alcoholism, which would render such classes and counseling worthless.
Your plan of action will depend upon whether she is the only addict and your husband’s brother is an extraordinarily passive enabler, or they are co-addicts. If he’s an enabler, since he has the greatest leverage in dealing with her, you will have to embark on some very quick educating. If they are both alcoholics, you can either let nature run its course out of their sights, or do everything possible to insure they experience consequences for misbehaviors, hoping to inspire sobriety before tragedy happens. Only when both are clean and sober, or one is out of their lives, will the child’s behavior have a chance of improving.
In the meantime, explain the problem to your parents and suggest that everyone cut off communication with the brother’s family until your plan of action is in place and progress has been made.
(Source for story idea: Annie’s Mailbox, November 28, 2005.)