'19 Kids & Counting' Finale: One Duggar Moving Away
'Don't Be Tardy': Kim Wants To Have More Kids
The Abusive Son: A Mother's Story
Filed under: Opinions, Relationships
Rob and Jacquelyn Mitchard on a trip to Florence in 1991. Courtesy of Jacquelyn Mitchard
Some parents consider their children heroes because they endure devastating, even life-threatening health conditions with courage. Some people see their children as heroes because they overcome bullying, criticism or social cruelty.
My son Rob is a hero to me because he faced the fact that he had made a mess not only of his life but of his very character. The road to that recognition began when I threw him out of our house one sweltering summer day almost three years ago, when he was 23. At the time, both of us thought this was an ending, not a beginning. As Rob slammed the door behind him that day, he never looked back. He took the first steps of a 10-mile walk back from our house in the country to his crummy apartment in the city. I ran from window to window, struggling to catch a last glimpse of his brawny form and characteristic springy step. I didn't know it then, but this would be the longest walk of Rob's life.
At the time, all I thought was that I would never see my firstborn again.
Once I had believed that Rob might be the only child I would ever have. Because I'd had trouble conceiving, Rob was specially treasured and the darling of his father's heart. When the next two came along, Rob seemed more put out than the usual older sibling. Then Dan died at 44, cancer claiming him as swiftly as a brush fire, leaving me with three little boys and precious little else. Rob was only 9. The younger boys clung to me, but Rob withdrew into an ever-darkening cloud of self-absorption. Of course, I wasn't the mother I should have been or wanted to be. Emotionally and economically, I almost cracked under the strain. But I tried to fight back, with all the stamina and creativity I had. After a full day at the university where I worked, I seized every freelance assignment I could find and was also -- crazy as it seems to me now -- trying to write my first novel. All I wanted was to keep life "normal" for my boys, not understanding that life would never be normal again. The youngest, Marty, was just 3 and wistfully told me that I should work at the Dairy Queen, where they had four-hour shifts. But even Marty seemed to know that this harried and weary woman was doing her best.
Read the rest of the story here.
This article was written by Jacquelyn Mitchard and appears in the April issue of More magazine.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
4-07-2011 @ 2:12PM
Susan Avery said...This is a brilliant essay.
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4-07-2011 @ 4:54PM
Cassie said...Thank you for sharing your story. I am living your life with an abusive daughter. She will be a junior in high school next year and I keep hoping she will grow up and take responsibilty. The last four years of our families life have been have been a horror story. Suspensions, drugs, social services, probation, disrespectful, damage to our home etc. We have begged social services to remove her for the sake of our other children. They won't because she is in a stable and loving enviroment. I find it ironic that all these counselors, social workers etc are all late twenties with no children and preach uncondtional love. You can love a child uncondtionally but it does not mean you have to accept totlay unacceptable behavior in the name of love. Your story gives me hope!!!
Reply
4-10-2011 @ 10:53PM
Yaelle said...Cassie I wonder if we can talk? I'm going to see if there's a way to either give you my email address or get yours.
4-13-2011 @ 2:07AM
mary said...I am a mother of a 32 y.o. son, only child, and similar story with different variables. My son always showed me love but I do understand I got all the best of him and all the worst of him. I was unconditional love and I was the safe place he showed all of his emotions. There are many similarities.....high IQ, he never got over the divorce of his Dad and I when he was only 2 y.o, I overcompensated for the lack of emotional connections he so wanted from his father and stepfather. Yes, as this story much of what made my son what he became was due to my needs, guilt, etc. It has been a long road; my son went into the military high security at the age of 17 and lived on his own for years but I still came to his rescue while he was on his own. I came to the point where I could finally look back and see how I smothered him while he was little; fall down, "oh, no don't cry let mommy fix it".....I never let him feel his own strength so I made him handicapped in many ways. There is no way I could have seen it for what it was then....ever.
My son eventually got into a deep darkness of drugs for several years in his twenties. He did not hit reality until I had to put a restraining order on him to get him away from me; after I had him picked up and jailed more than once. Even in jail I coddled him and when he would be released.
After a few months my son returned, he was sick, homeless, and none of his drug associates had a place for him....I reluctantly allowed him back. It took a year for him to recovery from his addiction (meth, crack, cocaine) he slept and ate and not much else and I didn't push him. I had read so much about this type of addiction and what happens to the physical and psych of a person to come back to any resemblance of normalty; he was fighting a battle lieing there moment to moment and day after day.......I still don't know how he did it but he did; he overcame his addiction but he had to do it his way alone not around a group blah, blah, blah. He got himself together and went back to school to finally persue what he has truly be drawn to his entire life. Every once in a while he will tell me when he sees someone doing drugs on tv he makes him sick.....for an addict to finally get to that point vs seeing it and it creates a craving is as good as it gets. I thank God for where we are now, it's not perfect but it is progressing from the depths of hell and darkness where I could not see any light to now is a miracle and out of love and finally awareness from much pain.
While I was going through these times with my son; I looked on the internet for resources such as "abused parents".....and there was nothing I could find. I think this is something that is truly not talked about. Thank you for this article, I devoured every word.
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4-12-2011 @ 6:20AM
Kate said...My son has never gotten over the divorce of his father and I either and uses it frequently as a justification for doing a multitude of things that are against his upbringing. As he is getting older, he is becoming more aggressive. His sister cannot stand to be left with him without an adult present and they are both teenagers. Consequently, I have to have a sitter for him even at his age. He screams, yells, and says the most hurtful things. He does things that he knows will shame me and tells me he does it for that purpose. He always asks why I cannot get a divorce from his stepdad and remarry his father, a lazy, deadbeat who has not seen him in over a year and not paid any support in over two. His father was abusive to me and to the children but my son was too young to remember that. When I say no, he tells me he wants to live with his father (who still lives at home with his mother and does not work). He is involved in the juvenille justice system because I have had to file unruly charges on him for various things ranging from theft to assault. He is now facing charges from his school for theft because he stole a laptop and he blames me for calling the police to report it... no blame on him for stealing it, just me for ratting him out. I told him I would do it again in a heartbeat because the rest of the family lives their lives in such a way that they do not have to deal with legal issues and we would not go down to protect him. I am met with the opinons of my family who say I have abandoned my child. I haven't. I am torn in two every day because I cannot fix his problems for him. My goal after th divorce was to never see that precious little baby cry because of me. I made a bad mistake doing that. I should have laid the boundaries out clearly from the beginning. I have never seen a child so angry but I can't fix that for him. He has to choose to fix it.
4-11-2011 @ 12:58PM
Tabitha said...I have been abused verbally and physically by our son since the age of two yrs old. He was born with Fetal alcohol Effect and has been dx'd with characteristics of many other disoders caused by the prenatal alcohol exposure. Although our son can't control his serious and even dangerous behavior issues he tells me often how much he loves me and his Dad. We love our only adopted child unconditionally but living with him has been more of a challenge then we ever thought it would be. There have been so many Dr's and ups and downs with psychotropic drugs and disturbing side effects that the stress of raising this child has been almost more than we can bear. We live day to day and can't ever make any plans for social events go to Church or even plan to see a movie because our whole lives have revolved around our son's behavior.
The scary thing is he is an impulsive roamer and wanders the streets in our City on foot or bike all day and into the evening searching for someone who will act as a friend and hangout with him. We have spent countless hours searching day and night only to have our son hide from us turn his phone off or sleep at an unknown persons home overnight and not show up somewhere untilt he next day. No one can truly understand what over lives are like with our son unless they are very close to us and know first hand what we deal with and the emotional pain and stress my husband and I suffer from. Our son will suffer a life time of pain end emotional stress because the woman who chose to drink while pregnant had little regard for this tiny person she was carrying knowing she wasn't going to commit herself to be his Mom.
I have been told by friends close to me to write a book about raising a child with FASD if I did it would be called "SHATTERED DREAMS".Due to our son's mild Intellectual Disability and Severe Behavior Issues and Psychotic Disorder he will never be able to Marry, Get a Driver's License or even live Independetly or work without close supervision. Our Dreams for our only son are not at all what we had planned for him and his future.
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