Even Dr. Phil can get it wrong. Of course you it’s your business.
Parents enable brother and endanger niece
Dear Doug:
My parents have long enabled my 30-year-old brother by providing a roof over his head while tolerating his working at best a few months out of the year. It recently became worse when he fathered a child. Now my parents watch his daughter while he sleeps off hangovers and even bail him out of jail and cover his legal bills for DUIs and bar fights. I’m losing respect for my family. I’d like to tell my parents to require that he pay rent and tell him that when the daughter is with him for the weekend, he shouldn’t drink. What should I do?
Signed,
Concerned Uncle
. . . .
Dear Codependent,
Other columnists might suggest that you have no control and that you should tell your parents, once, what you think. They would suggest that you then butt out.
This, in my opinion, is extremely dangerous advice since your brother is obviously incapable of properly caring for his daughter. She should not be left with him unsupervised until he has a period of sobriety.
I think there is little you can do to get your parents to act properly. They seem to be obdurately blind to your brother’s addiction, their role in enabling, and the potential danger to their grandchild. However, since I never say don’t try to educate, give them all of my books and hope.
In the meantime, if the mother is not an addict, I would help her gain custody by serving as her key witness. If she, too, is an addict, then I would seek legal counsel and do everything possible to coerce your brother, under threat of loss of custody, to get sober. This is a classic case where I advocate a role for police in setting up someone for a DUI, which I recommended in Get Out of the Way!
(Source for story idea: Dr. Phil in O! magazine, December, 2007.)