A Parent's Protection

It seems that parents always want to protect their children, even when their problems are self-induced. Since I do not have children, I have no idea what it is like to watch a child struggle through a problem wanting to protect them from that problem, so my observations are very limited. I came to this realization by watching a show about addiction. One person, Daniel, was addicted to crystal meth. His mother would give him money to buy the drug, so he would not have to resort to stealing to provide for his habit. This mother also provided a roof over his head, food on his table and clothes on his back. Daniel was in his twenty's and with no job. He mooched of his mother to provide for his drug habit. The mother was trying to protect Daniel from the harsh realities of his drug addiction.

In the second half of the show the mother and the other siblings confronted him through an intervention to invite him to go to rehab. If Daniel was not willing to go to rehab, the mother was willing to stop providing for him and makes him bare the consequences of his drug addiction. Daniel was very thankful for his family's willingness to confront him on the issue. The show ended by an update that Daniel has been sober for six months, which is a great accomplishment that I can never fully realize as I am not addicted to meth.

The mother was trying to continue protecting her son, even from his own choice to smoke crystal meth, but that protection was the very thing that fueled his addiction. The viewer could see how difficult it was for the mother to provide the money for the drug, but she was scared of what would happen if she did not provide it. At the time of the intervention the very thing that the mother believed she could not do by no longer providing for her son was the very thing that he needed to force to make a choice of attending rehab.

It seems a parent may wish to protect a child from bad choices, but the complete consequences of those bad choices may be the only thing that truly helps the child see the full perspective of his or her harmful actions. I cannot criticize the parent for providing for a child because it probably is very difficult to watch a child go without, but many times the only way for a irresponsible person to learn the reality of life is through the inevitable hardships that can result from bad choices. The show demonstrates that the parents desire to protect a child will never disappear and there is a difficult fine line between protecting a child from evil and sustaining a child in that evil. While this line is difficult to define, it does not mean that it should be ignored either.

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