Does anyone ever remember the scene where Dill Harris runs away from his family and explained that his family only acted like they loved him by showering him with money and gifts to keep him busy so they wouldn’t have to deal with him? But when it came time for anything more meaningful like spending time, they were absent. He explained that his family didn’t really love him.
I think back to it a lot, because I haven’t seen that insight reflected much anywhere else. A lot of families are how he described, and when the adults are older don’t understand why their kids don’t feel any connection or want to visit them. But it’s because the so-called guardians didn’t want to be parents, or supporting mentors. They blame the kids for not caring about their parents, like in a Simpsons meme, and if they’re rich they say their kids were spoiled, but it just makes sense to me. I’ve seen it in the families of yuppies with self-interested or even narcissistic parents, who gave their kids money as a distraction and who functionally raised latchkey kids.
In a contemporary setting, they give them lots of video games or a smartphones to be electronic babysitters. Rather than to teach their kids anything, converse with them, support them, love them, or do anything to deepen their bonds. Eventually they get blindsided when their kids don’t act how they expect them to do, and describe it as spontaneous or irrational, when the only reason it doesn’t make sense to them is that they never even took the time to learn about their kids.
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by hypnospaceoutlaw23